PEORIA, Ill. ? Contrary to an article that ran a day early in the Peoria Journal Star, the Bradley Baseball team will host Missouri Valley Conference rival Evansville in a three-game weekend series that will begin FRIDAY at 7 p.m. at O'Brien Field. Bradley's final home stand of the season will continue with Saturday's 7 p.m. game against the Aces and will conclude with the series finale at one o'clock Sunday afternoon.
Bradley will conduct special pregame ceremonies before each of the three games this weekend. Former Bradley ace and current pitching coach Mike Dunne will have his uniform number, 11, retired immediately before Friday's game. Head coach Dewey Kalmer, who won his 1,000th career game last Saturday at Indiana State, will be honored in a pregame ceremony Saturday and the team's seven seniors will be recognized prior to Sunday's game.
The weekend series features the defending Valley regular-season and tournament champion Purple Aces (32-19, 12-9) against the league's hottest team. Bradley (27-16, 10-8) rolls into the weekend set having won 12 of its last 13 games, including a season-best eight in a row. The current seven-game league winning streak matches the longest Valley ride in program history.
The three-game series against Evansville will wrap up Bradley's 2007 home schedule. The Braves, who boast a 12-4 home record to date this season, enter the next-to-last week of the Valley race in fourth place in the league standings, just one-and-a-half games behind third-place Evansville. While two of the six spots in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament have been secured by league-leading #9 Wichita State and host Missouri State, Bradley's magic number to claim one of the four remaining positions is four (any combination of Bradley wins and losses by either Illinois State or Northern Iowa the last two weeks). Bradley will visit UNI next week to end the regular season.
Bradley Baseball weekend ticket prices at O'Brien Field are $5 for adults and $2 for children (K-12), while Bradley students, faculty and staff, as well as active military members and their immediate families, may receive free admission by presenting a valid University/military ID at the gate.
