The University of Illinois Springfield baseball team hit four home runs and defeated Drury by an 11-5 score in the championship game of the NCAA Division II Midwest Regional Tournament. The Prairie Stars are one of 16 remaining teams in the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time in program history.
 
UIS jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the game, with home runs accounting for six of those runs. Chris Monroe and Zach Speaker hit back-to-back homers in the first inning, give the Prairie Stars a 3-0 lead before Drury even got to bat. In the fifth, UIS scored four more times, including a three-run homer by Chris Mathieu.
 
Brock Immke started for the Prairie Stars and did not allow a run through the first four innings. He got in trouble in the fifth though, and UIS went to its bullpen. Three runs charged to Immke scored, but a bases loaded fly ball landed just shy of the left-field wall to keep UIS ahead in the game.
 
Both bullpens got through the sixth and seven innings without allowing a run. In the eighth, John Sechen hit a two-run homer for UIS to make the score 9-3. Drury got one back in the bottom half of that inning, but UIS added two more insurance runs in the ninth. The Panthers scored one unearned run in the ninth, but a nice play on a groundball by third baseman Ruben Markham got the batter out at first, and started a Prairie Stars celebration.
 
Mathieu ended the game with three hits, four RBI, and one run. Sechen, Monroe, Speaker, and Brandon Bannon all scored twice, and Sechen and Monroe each had two RBI. Trent Sidwell earned the win in relief.
 
UIS will next play in the NCAA Super Regionals agains Ashland in Ashland, Ohio. That series with be a best-of-three starting on Friday. The Prairie Stars will enter their next game with a 40-15-1 overall record.