{"id":2293137,"date":"2026-02-21T22:20:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2293137"},"modified":"2026-02-21T22:20:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:20:53","slug":"royals-scratch-across-late-runs-to-spoil-evans-stellar-outing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-scratch-across-late-runs-to-spoil-evans-stellar-outing\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Scratch Across Late Runs to Spoil Evans&#8217; Stellar Outing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"storyPageContentBody\" data-safe-html=\"true\"><strong>CHARLOTTE, N.C. &#8211;<\/strong> Southern Illinois baseball&#8217;s <dfn><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/siusalukis.com\/sports\/baseball\/roster\/andrew-evans\/9685\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"9685\">Andrew Evans<\/a><\/dfn> delivered Southern&#8217;s best starting performance of the young season, but the bats could not get going in a 2-0 loss to Queens on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Evans and Queens&#8217; starter Joey Ruller were dominant early. Prior to the top of the seventh, the lone hit in the game was a bunt single by Queens&#8217; third baseman Anibal Rivera. <dfn><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/siusalukis.com\/sports\/baseball\/roster\/kye-watson\/9677\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"9677\">Kye Watson<\/a><\/dfn> and <dfn><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/siusalukis.com\/sports\/baseball\/roster\/mason-schwalbach\/8996\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"8996\">Mason Schwalbach<\/a><\/dfn> were hit by pitches in the first and third innings, respectively, representing the only baserunners for SIU.<\/p>\n<p>The Salukis were able to make solid contact but could not find holes and were victims of elite defense from the Royals.<\/p>\n<p><dfn><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/siusalukis.com\/sports\/baseball\/roster\/cecil-lofton\/9006\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"9006\">Cecil Lofton<\/a><\/dfn> finally got the Salukis in the hit column in the top of the seventh but could not advance.<\/p>\n<p>Evans was rolling and sat at 85 pitches when he came out for the bottom of the eighth. Rivera smacked a single to left center, which would mark the end of Evans&#8217; day.<\/p>\n<p><dfn><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/siusalukis.com\/sports\/baseball\/roster\/charlie-miller\/9681\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"9681\">Charlie Miller<\/a><\/dfn> relieved Evans, and after a sacrifice bunt to get Queens&#8217; runner to second, he struck out the next batter as Southern was one out away from squandering the best scoring chance either team had all day long.<\/p>\n<p>The Saukis decided to walk Hunter Huneycutt to give themselves a force out at the first three bases, and to face the nine-hole hitter Dylan Schaefer. Schaefer made them pay for that move, pulling a two-run double down the left-field line.<\/p>\n<p>SIU went down in order in the top of the ninth.<\/p>\n<p>Evans\u00a0(1-1) took the loss despite one earned run on 7.0 innings pitched, two hits, and nine strikeouts.<\/p>\n<p>Queens&#8217; Joey Ruller\u00a0(1-0) had a big day in his own right, pitching seven shutout innings and striking out five Salukis. Jake Young earned the victory after closing the game.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UP NEXT<\/strong><br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nSIU and Queens will play the last game between the two Saturday at 5 p.m. CT.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n\u00a0&#13;\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source siusalukis.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. &#8211; Southern Illinois baseball&#8217;s Andrew Evans delivered Southern&#8217;s best starting performance of the young season, but the bats could not get going in a 2-0 loss to Queens on Friday. Evans and Queens&#8217; starter Joey Ruller were dominant early. Prior to the top of the seventh, the lone hit in the game was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2293138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2293137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Royals-Scratch-Across-Late-Runs-to-Spoil-Evans-Stellar-Outing.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2293139,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293137\/revisions\/2293139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2293138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}