NORMAL, Ill. - Exploding for seven runs in the first inning, Evansville cruised to a dominating, 12-0 victory over Illinois State in Friday afternoon's series opener at Duffy Bass Field in Normal, Ill.

"Great way to start the weekend with our offense making a statement," said Aces head baseball coach Wes Carroll on the convincing win. "Shane Gray was outstanding but our offense really did a great job against a very good pitcher."

Eight Aces batters recorded a hit on the day with Ben Komonosky and Simon Scherry leading the way with three hits a piece. Komonosky tied for the game-high with two RBI along with Brent Widder, who also drove-in a pair of runs.

On the mound, Shane Gray pitched a gem of a performance, throwing a complete game shutout, striking-out five and facing just five batters over the minimum.

Evansville's offense got rolling early and often, pushing across seven runs in the top of the first. To open the game, Evansville recorded three-straight singles, loading the bases for Tanner Craig. Craig opened the scoring, drawing a walk and pushing Kenton Crews home. A passed ball then advanced all the runners, scoring Beilsmith.  After Danny Borgstrom drew another walk, Widder drove home a pair of runs to increase Evansville's lead to 4-0 with still no outs. The Aces concluded the high-scoring inning with back-to-back singles from Craig Shepherd and Komonosky and an RBI groundout to earn a seven-run lead for Evansville.

The Aces offense would go on to tabulate another big inning with four runs in the third and added an additional run in the fourth to secure the 12-0 win.

The 12-run win was the largest Conference victory for the Aces since an eerily similar win seven years ago. Evansville earned a 12-0 shutout win in seven innings on May 10, 2014 over Illinois State in the series opener. In that game, Aces starter Kyle Freeland threw a complete game shutout, striking-out five, giving up four hits and not walking or hitting a batter, the identical line to that of Shane Gray. This marks the ninth time that Evansville has won by 12-or-more runs in 27 seasons of Missouri Valley Conference play.
 

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