Championship Central |
Bracket
EAST PEORIA, Ill. – Six teams advanced to the second day of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Softball Championship Tournament after competing in eight games on a blustery day that included six contests in the winners’ bracket and two in the losers’ bracket. Competition resumes tomorrow, May 5 at 11 a.m. Central Time at the EastSide Centre in East Peoria, Illinois.
Two teams survived the first day unscathed, including No. 3 seed University of Missouri-St. Louis and No. 5 seed McKendree University, winning both of their games to remain in the winners’ bracket. Missouri-St. Louis defeated No. 6 seed University of Illinois Springfield 2-0 in Game 4 to start the day before upsetting No. 2 seed Rockhurst University by a tight 3-2 margin in Game 8. McKendree found its way through the day with two upsets for its first two GLVC Championship Tournament wins in program history, starting with a 4-1 victory in Game 2 over No. 4 seed Truman State University followed by a 3-2 win over the top seed and sixth-ranked University of Southern Indiana in Game 7. Now the Tritons and Bearcats will face each other in a 1 p.m. CT contest Friday afternoon.
Two other teams were not so fortunate, having been eliminated from the league’s postseason event after two losses in the double-elimination tournament. UIS fell to UMSL first and then lost 2-1 against No. 7 seed Bellarmine University in the elimination Game 6, while No. 8 seed William Jewell College dropped its first game 10-4 against Southern Indiana in Game 1 before getting knocked out by a 7-0 shutout loss to Truman State in Game 5. Additionally, Game 3 saw Rockhurst beat Bellarmine 5-3.
In addition, nine home runs were belted over the outfield fences today, including four in Game 1 with three of those coming from USI. Highlighting the nine dingers was the one record-breaking bomb hit my UMSL’s Alex Stupek against UIS in the bottom of the second to become the school record leader with 51 career homers.
On Friday, Game 9 and 10 will open the day when Rockhurst takes on Truman and USI faces Bellarmine, respectively, at 11 a.m. CT. Game 11 follows with the UMSL-MCK matchup before with Game 9 and 10 winners square off at 3 p.m. Closing out the second day will be the Game 12 winner versus the loser of Game 11 at 5 p.m. in Game 13.
All of today’s games can be replayed on the GLVC Sports Network at
GLVCSN.com by clicking the “On Demand” tab, while the remainder of the championship games will be streamed live and free of charge, and live stats will be available as well. All of this information, and more, can be found on the official championship page at
GLVCsports.com/softball17. Additionally, follow all the action on twitter using the league’s official handle @
GLVCsports or hashtags #
GLVCsb and #
GLVCchamps.