CHICAGO -- UIC opened the 2018 season with seven straight games outside Chicago, but the Flames come home on Tuesday, Feb. 2, to host the Roosevelt Lakers at Granderson Stadium. First pitch between the crosstown rivals is scheduled for 4:05 p.m. with Tuesday's forecasted high temperature expected to reach 56 degrees.

The Flames (5-2) won two-of-three games at UTRGV over the weekend. UIC won the first two games of the series by a combined score of 18-6 before dropping the finale 9-4, while surrendering seven unearned runs Sunday. The Flames also won three times in four chances, topping Southern twice and Prairie View A&M, at the Andre Dawson Classic in New Orleans during the season's opening weekend, Feb. 16-18.

UIC is batting .303 as a team through seven games with five players batting .350 or better in the early going. Two Flames - Thomas Norton and Aaron Ackerman - are batting at least .400, while Scott Ota is hitting .500 thus far in his third season in Chicago. Ota and Ackerman each have nine RBI, while Ota and Derrick Patrick pace the club with eight runs scored.

Ota was named the Horizon League Batter of the Week on Feb. 19 after the Andre Dawson Classic.

The Flames have found success with big hits and small ball alike. UIC leads the Horizon League and ranks 14^th nationally with 20 doubles this season, an average of 2.9 per game. Ackerman ranks in the top 10 in the NCAA, eighth to be exact, with five two-base hits. Ota and Bowen Ogata are tied for 33^rd with four apiece. Head coach Mike Dee's squad has also done well moving runners over once they get on base. The Flames rank eighth nationally with seven sacrifices. Freshman Ryan Lin-Peistrup is second among all NCAA players with four sacrifices so far.

On the mound, UIC boasts a staff earned-run average of 2.74 after ranking second in the nation in that category in 2017. The four starting pitchers used this season have a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.7. Two of the four starting pitchers - Ryan Campbell and Reid Birlingmair - were the first two Horizon League Pitchers of the Week this season. That duo is a combined 3-0 with a 0.67 ERA (2 ER/27.0 IP). Charlie Cerny has not started a game, but has appeared out of the bullpen seven times in 2018. He has not walked a batter in 8.1 innings of work, while striking out 14.

Roosevelt, an NAIA program, will be playing its first game of the spring on Tuesday. The Lakers went 2-3 in five games in the fall.

The Flames will hit the road again this weekend, traveling to Atlanta, Ga., to play Georgia Tech in a three-game series. UIC returns home on Tuesday, March 6 to begin a 14-game homestand against the Northwestern Wildcats.