CHICAGO – After trailing for most of the game, the UIC baseball team (22-25-1, 14-6 MVC) erased a four-run deficit to defeat Illinois State (30-20, 12-11 MVC) in front of a home crowd at Curtis Granderson Stadium on Senior/Alumni Day.
The Redbirds scratched across a run in the first inning, but not before UIC flashed its leather as junior
Lucas Smith raced to the wall in centerfield and hauled in a line drive off the bat of Michael Carrano for the second out of the frame.
After the Flames went quietly in the bottom of the first, the defense once again backed senior
Brandon Bak on the mound. Payton McHarg lifted a 1-0 pitch into shallow right field, but freshman
Sean Cody covered plenty of ground before laying out for a diving catch to end the inning.
Illinois State extended its lead with a pair of runs in the top of the third, but UIC answered with two runs of its own in the bottom half of the inning. Junior
Jake Busson lined a shallow single into center field to score senior
Will Flanigan, while junior
Ashton Kampa later crossed the plate on a fielder's choice to cut into the deficit.
The Flames evened the score innings later when Kampa reached on an infield pop-up before eventually coming home on a sacrifice fly off the bat of Smith before the Redbirds responded with four runs in the top of the seventh.
UIC threatened in the bottom half with the bases loaded, but managed just one run on a sacrifice fly from Kampa. Both teams traded runs in the seventh, as junior
Thomas Curry delivered his second consecutive solo home run of the series, sending another ball over the left-centerfield wall into the Redbirds' bullpen.
After a quiet eighth inning and a 1-2-3 relief frame from graduate student
Jared Lessman in the top of the ninth, the Flames came to the plate down to their final three outs.
Trailing by three, Busson led off the inning with a double and scored on an RBI single from Curry. Later in the frame, with the bases loaded, junior
Vidal Colon delivered a shallow single just over Graham Mastro's head, bringing home Curry and pinch-hitter
Andrew Pyszka to tie the game at 8-8.
In his fifth and final at-bat, Kampa stepped in against Illinois State's Shuto Tiger Okumura with a 1-2 count. The sidearm pitcher's fourth offering was lined past the right side of the infield, allowing Cody to score from third and securing a walk-off win for UIC.
Coupled with results from around the Missouri Valley Conference on Saturday, the walk-off victory clinched UIC a spot in the 2026 MVC Baseball Championship, set to take place May 20-24 in Murray, Ky.
The entire play-by-play and box score can be found
here.
UP NEXT!
The home finale against Illinois State on Sunday will stream on
ESPN+ with a scheduled 4:05 p.m. (CT) first pitch. The game will also have live stats available at
UICFlames.com. The Flames will celebrate Mother's Day with a pink UIC Flames T-shirt giveaway, while supplies last, and will recognize mothers in attendance throughout the game.
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For more information on UIC Athletics and UIC baseball, visit
UICFlames.com. Fans can also follow the Flames on social media through X (
@UIC_Baseball and
@UICFlames) and Instagram (
@uic_baseball and
@uicflames).
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