FROM CBD NEWS SOURCE
FRESNO, Calif. — With the Fresno State baseball team entering its first season in the Mountain West, head coach Mike Batesole announced the Bulldogs’ 2013 schedule, which includes 27 regular season home games and the 2013 MW Tournament in May at Beiden Field.
In addition to hosting three-game series with all five MW schools that play baseball – San Diego State (March 15-17), UNLV (April 5-7), Air Force (April 19-21), New Mexico (May 10-12) and Nevada (May 16-18) – the Bulldogs will welcome UC Santa Barbara (Feb. 15-17), Sacramento State (Feb. 19), USC (March 1-3), San Jose State (March 5), Pacific (April 2), CSU Bakersfield (April 17 and April 30), and Hawai’i (May 7) to Beiden for non-conference contests.
“This will be our toughest schedule in years by RPI standards,” Batesole said. “It will be exciting to have UCSB and USC at Beiden Field for non-league weekends as-well-as Red Wave travel weekends to Stanford and Cal. We will find out a lot about who we are in the first four weeks. But, I think what everyone is hopped up for is our inaugural season in the Mountain West that includes home and away series with every conference foe.”
The ‘Dogs also visit each of the five other MW schools for three-game road trips.
Fresno State will play all 10 of its non-conference road games in the state of California, with a three-game series at Stanford (Feb. 22-24), a four-game series at Cal (March 7-10) and weeknight matchups at Cal State Bakersfield (Feb. 26 and April 23), San Jose State (March 5) and Pacific (March 19).
The February series at Stanford sends the ‘Dogs back to Sunken Diamond, where Fresno State finished the 2012 season a game away from advancing to the NCAA Stanford Regional championship game.
In total, the Bulldogs’ 2013 slate features 10 matchups with Pac-12 opponents and nine games against teams that made it to last year’s NCAA Tournament.
New season tickets for the 27-game home schedule will go on sale Jan. 2, 2013 through the Bulldog Ticket Office, over the phone at (559) 278-3647 or online at www.gobulldogs.com. The season tickets will be available starting as low as $200 (adult upper reserved seats) and $99 (youth upper reserved seats).
After winning conference championships in each of the past seven seasons, the ‘Dogs enter the 2013 season focused on winning its first MW championship. Fresno State returns three all-conference and four all-tournament team selections from the 2012 squad that earned the program’s sixth NCAA Tournament appearance in the last seven years.
Bulldogs’ junior outfielder Aaron Judge, who won the 2012 College Baseball Home Run Derby and received first-team all-conference honors in each of his first two seasons at Fresno State, was recently named a second-team preseason All-American by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.
Batesole, a two-time national coach of the year and the 2008 national champion, begins his 18th season as a Division I head coach with a 615-419-1 overall record and his 11th season with the Bulldogs, who he led to a 360-264 mark during his first 10 seasons at Fresno State.
Prior to the Bulldogs’ Feb. 15 season and home opener versus UC Santa Barbara, Fresno State will host its annual Alumni game on Feb. 9 at 2:05 p.m. at Beiden Field.
