The Southeast Missouri State baseball team swept the Southern Illinois-Edwardsville Cougars this weekend, giving the Redhawks a 12-0 record in the Ohio Valley Conference.

Friday night opened the weekend series against SIUE at Capaha Field. The Redhawks gave senior starting pitcher, Joey Lucchesi the ball to start off a strong weekend.

The scoring began quickly and consistently as the Redhawks scored at least one run in each of the first six innings of the game. After the three-run sixth inning by the Redhawks, the Cougars came back in the top of the seventh inning with four runs to bring the game within five runs. After a small hiccup by the bullpen in the seventh, they buckled down and only allowed one run in the final two innings to close out a 9-5 victory over the Cougars.

Saturday afternoon’s game didn’t just bring another victory for the team, but also had 2,025 fans cheering all game long.

Junior right-handed pitcher Clay Chandler had a great outing as he only surrendered four hits in a complete-game shutout. Again, the Redhawks offense started off quickly by getting a run in the first inning, but didn’t score again until the fifth inning. The Redhawks scored two more runs in the final two innings to bring out a 4-0 victory over SIUE.

Senior first baseman, Ryan Rippee left Saturday’s game early with a dislocated kneecap. There is currently no time table on his return.

On Sunday afternoon, the Redhawks were looking for another sweep against a conference opponent. Junior starting pitcher, Robert Beltran was given the task to give the Redhawks yet another victory.

Just like the previous two games, offense started off quickly with the Redhawks scoring six runs in the first inning. In the third inning, the Cougars threatened by scoring five runs, but the Redhawks responded, scoring two in the third and then seven in the fourth. The scoring didn’t end there as the Redhawks scored five more runs in the seventh, giving the team a total of 20 runs in the game. The Cougars scored a total of six runs in the final three innings, but the Redhawks hung on for a 20-11 victory and weekend sweep over the Cougars.

“We wanna show that we are the best team in this conference,” sophomore second baseman Trevor Ezell said. “We’re looking forward to it, it’s going to be not easy, but a fun weekend next weekend.”

“Our pitching on the weekends has been dominant and we’ve only been needed to score one or two runs to win,” junior infielder Chris Caffrey said. “For offense to pick up the pitchers instead of vice versa this weekend was kind of nice.”

According to Caffrey, it feels like if they’re doing the right thing then they will be confident by the end of the day.

“The confidence is there. If you go back and look at some of the struggles we went through early in the year, they just found a way to win games,” coach Steve Bieser said. “They feel confident when they walk out to the field and they’re going to find a way to win.”

The Redhawks at the end of the series stole 15 bases against the Cougars. Ezell had a total of five stolen bases over the weekend.

Looking forward on Tuesday against Arkansas State, they’re trying to keep the momentum moving and stay hot for the weekend, according to Ezell.

The Redhawks play again Tuesday at 6 p.m. against Arkansas State and try to extend their winning streak to 11 games.