BOX SCORE

Coach Dee's Postgame Comments

HL Tournament Bracket

WHITING, Ind. -- The No. 1 seed UIC baseball team (29-20-1) advanced to the Horizon League Tournament semifinals and extended its winning streak to eight games after an 8-5 victory against fourth-seeded Valparaiso (22-30) on Thursday afternoon at Oil City Stadium. Senior Tyler Detmer got the Flames rolling with back-to-back home runs in the first and third frames, while HL Pitcher of the Year Jake Dahlberg lasted 7.2 innings and collected his conference-best eighth win of the season.

UIC returns to action on Friday at Noon CT and awaits the winner of #2 Wright State versus #3 Milwaukee who play at 3 p.m. on Thursday afternoon.

Dahlberg (8-2) tied a career-high with nine strikeouts, giving up eight hits and a mere four earned runs. Senior Ryan Hinchley picked up his 10th save of the season, which ranks third all-time on UIC's single-season leaderboard.

All nine UIC batters reached base in the contest and eight of the nine recorded at least one hit. Zenon Kolakowski and Cody Bohanek went 3-for-5 from the plate as the Flames tallied 14 hits on the day.

Detmer kicked things off in the opening frame with a two-run jack that gave UIC an early 2-0 lead. He struck once again in the third frame with a solo moonshot to left center. The senior now has seven homers on the year and 35 RBI.

After Valpo plated its first run in the top of the fifth stanza the Flames put up a four-spot in the bottom of the sixth inning to jump ahead 8-1.

Alex Lee and Rob Calabrese began the frame with back-to-back walks and then David Cronin and Kolakowski drove in both runners on consecutive RBI-singles. Bohanek then juiced the bags with a bunt single. Jeff Boehm would eventually send in two runs with his 15th double of the season and up his league-leading RBI total to 64. His 64 RBI ranks tied-for-second on UIC's single-season top-10 list and needs just two more to take over the top spot from Bart Babineaux.

The Crusaders plated a lone run in the seventh frame and then gave the Flames a scare by adding three more in the eighth to pull within 8-5. Hinchley came in for the final out of the eighth and rang up Crusader shortstop Spencer Mahoney to end the surge.