The Eastern baseball team will look to continue its hot streak and in the process extinguish the Flames, as it faces Illinois-Chicago 3 p.m. Tuesday at Coaches’ Stadium.

The Panthers are winners of four of their last five games and took two out of three on the road from defending Ohio Valley Conference Champion Southeast Missouri State over the weekend.

Eastern head coach Jim Schmitz said the series against SEMO was one of the best showings of the year for Eastern (17-19, 4-5 OVC). Eastern won the first game of a double-header 5-1 behind a complete game victory by senior pitcher Damon White.

The Panthers went to extra innings in the second game of the twin-bill and won in dramatic fashion on a walk-off homer by outfielder Pete Stone in the eighth inning.

Eastern lost its chance for a sweep Sunday after surrendering five home runs to the Indians and dropped the game 22-9. Despite the Panthers inability to break out the brooms, Schmitz was satisfied with the weekend games.

“I was so pleased with the series,” Schmitz said. “We had two of our better pitched games. We didn’t panic when we were down in the games, and we beat a really good pitcher, (Tim), Alvarez in the first game.”

Going into the tilt, Alvarez was tied for the national lead in wins (9) and ranked 10th in earned run average at 1.44.

The Panthers will hope to not see a letdown in competition when they face UIC. The Flames boast an impressive 21-13 record and have won six of their last seven games.

Illinois-Chicago has taken a positive turn since the hiring of head coach Mike Dee five years ago. Dee has won more than 100 games in the last three years and the Flames had the 20th best record (39-16) in the nation last season.

Facing the Flames on the hill will be freshman righthander Mike Budde. The six-foot hurler has three decisions and all were losses, but Schmitz needs Budde to be sharp come conference time and a lot is expected from the Providence Catholic High School (New Lennox) graduate.

“We’re trying to get some new arms going,” Schmitz said. “(One of those arms) is Budde, and we will need him to win the OVC.”

Although the contest is non-conference, the game takes on significance due to the rivalry with Illinois-Chicago. UIC is not as close as other rivals such as Illinois State but Schmitz mentioned the game still has a sense of extra importance.

“All of the schools in Illinois provide us with rivalry,” Schmitz said. “A lot of our players know (players on) UIC,”

If the Panthers can defeat Illinois-Chicago and sweep a double-header with Bradley in Peoria Wednesday, Eastern will be over the .500 hundred mark for the first time all season. Schmitz said being above .500 would be nice, but he would like to see the Panthers improve their overall play.

“Well (.500) is kind of a mental thing,” Schmitz said. “But we just feel like we need to get better production in the bottom of our order.”

A key to providing the Panthers with offense in the bottom of the lineup is junior infielder/designated hitter Nolan Cork. The co-captain sparked Eastern with three runs batted in during the Southeast Missouri series including his second home run of the season.

“Cork really boosted our lineup,” Schmitz said. “We just need to be playing confident baseball going into the weekend (conference) games.