PEORIA, Ill. – Bradley Softball hits the road for the final time during the regular season with the Braves closing out the road portion of the regular-season schedule with a three-game series at Evansville Saturday and Sunday.
Tuesday's 1-0 victory over league-leading Illinois State moved Bradley (17-17 overall, 10-11 MVC) into a tie for fifth with Indiana State in the Missouri Valley Conference standings. Evansville (20-19 overall, 8-12 MVC) enters the weekend tied with Drake for seventh.
The teams kick off the series Saturday with a noon doubleheader from Cooper Stadium in Evansville., Ind., that will be available on ESPN3. Sunday's series finale has a first pitch of 11 a.m. and will not be streamed. BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live stats for all three contests.
The Braves hold a 41-35 lead in the all-time series with the Purple Aces. BU Head Coach Amy Hayes owns a 20-10 record with the Braves against her alma mater and the Braves have claimed the season series in eight of the last nine years the teams have played. In fact, Bradley is 14-3 against the Purple Aces since 2014. The Braves are 11-1 in the last 12 road games in the series after winning a pair of games at Evansville in 2019. Overall, Bradley is 20-21 in road games in the series.
Bradley has won at least two games in the state of Indiana each of the last six seasons the Braves have ventured to the Hoosier State (2014-19). In fact, BU has picked up at least one road win in the state of Indiana in 10 consecutive seasons (2010-19) with Bradley not traveling to the state of Indiana during the abbreviated 2020 campaign. Overall, the Braves are 16-7 (.696) in the state of Indiana since 2014 and own a 22-14 (.611) mark in the Hoosier State under Head Coach Amy Hayes. Bradley follows up the weekend series at Evansville with a home series against Drake (May 8 & 9) before returning to Evansville for the MVC Tournament May 12-15.
Grace French tossed a complete-game, two-hit shutout against league-leading Illinois State Tuesday afternoon to hand the Redbirds just their second loss in the last 11 contests. French, who notched her second complete game shutout of the year, silenced a Redbird offense that had outscored its opponents 25-0 in its last four contests. Bradley's lone run came in the sixth when Jillian Navarro broke up a perfect game to that point with a leadoff double and came home on a RBI double by Camryn Monteer. The Bradley run snapped a streak of 26 consecutive scoreless innings by Illinois State pitching. The last time the Braves shutout its I-74 rival was 2014 and the last two seasons in which Bradley recorded a shutout of the Redbirds it went on to reach the NCAA Tournament (2014 & 2009).
Bradley enters the weekend series at Evansville two games ahead of the Purple Aces in the win column in a tie for fifth in the MVC standings. All six of the Braves' remaining regular-season games are against teams currently behind them in the Valley standings. After a fourth-place league finish in 2019, BU is looking for its first back-to-back top half conference showings since the 1994 (2nd) and 1995 (5th) seasons. Bradley has placed in the top half of the MVC standings three times since 2014 and has posted a school record for conference wins (15) three times during that same stretch (2014, 2015 & 2019). Those three 15-win league seasons mark the only times in program history the Braves have won more than 12 conference contests.
The Braves return home after the Evansville series to finish out the regular-season schedule with a home series against Drake May 8 & 9 at Petersen Hotels Field at the Louisville Slugger Sports Complex.
