FROM CBD NEWS SOURCE
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall baseball revealed its 2013 schedule, which will include five preseason top-40 opponents and six 2012 NCAA Regional selections, Friday afternoon.
Marshall’s 56-game regular season is set to feature games against preseason No. 8 Kentucky, No. 20 Rice, No. 36 Southern Miss, No. 37 East Carolina, and No. 38 Coastal Carolina, as voted on by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper. Marshall will also collide with UCF, Tulane, and USC Upstate, three programs currently receiving votes in the preseason rankings.
Further, Marshall will face six opponents who advanced into the 2012 NCAA Regional stage: Coastal Carolina, East Carolina, Kentucky, Rice, UAB, and UCF.
“The players and coaches are extremely excited about this year’s schedule,” said Marshall head coach Jeff Waggoner. “With the challenge of a very competitive nonconference schedule in addition to the always-demanding Conference USA schedule and traveling on the road, we are going to need our eight seniors to step up and lead us.”
The Thundering Herd’s slate is set to begin on Friday, Feb. 15 with a three-game series at future Conference USA foe Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va. The Monarchs, who will join C-USA in the 2013-14 season, were 19-34 in 2012 while managing a 9-21 record in the Colonial Athletic Association.
The Herd will travel to Greensboro, N.C. for its second weekend where it will face North Carolina A&T for a three-game series on Friday and Saturday before heading to Myrtle Beach, S.C. for a Sunday meeting with Coastal Carolina. The Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina finished their 2012 season at the NCAA’s Columbia Regional stage after posting a 42-19 record and capturing their sixth straight Big South Conference title.
Over the succeeding four weekends, Marshall will face USC Upstate and Wofford in Spartanburg, S.C., Northern Kentucky in Highland Heights, Ky., Central Michigan in a location to be determined, and Radford in Radford, Va. Midweek games during that stretch will feature Radford in Beckley (March 12), a rekindling of the old rivalry with West Virginia in Charleston (March 19), and a rematch of last year’s battle against the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington (March 26).
Marshall will meet WVU on three occasions (March 19, April 2, and May 14) as part of a three-game season series.
Conference action will begin for the Herd on March 29 when it hosts UAB at Appalachian Power Park in Charleston, W.Va. Marshall will also host C-USA opponents Houston (April 5-7), Tulane (April 26-28), and East Carolina (May 10-12). Each C-USA home series will take place at Power Park with the exception of the series against ECU which will take place at Linda K. Epling Stadium in Beckley, W.Va.
Marshall’s road conference schedule will begin in Hattiesburg, Miss. against Southern Miss (April 12-14) and will see the Herd go to Orlando, Fla. for a series at UCF (April 19-21), Memphis, Tenn. for a series at Memphis (May 3-5), and Houston, Texas for a series at Rice (May 16-18).
The 2013 Conference USA Championship will be held at Rice’s Reckling Park in Houston, beginning Wednesday, May 22.
Midweek opponents in the latter half of the season include the aforementioned WVU contests as well as Eastern Kentucky (April 3 and May 1), Ohio State (April 10), Ohio (April 16 and 24), and Morehead State (April 30).
