FROM CBD NEWS SOURCE
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio—Head baseball coach Danny Schmitz has announced the 2014 schedule. The Falcons, who are coming off a trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2013, will begin their MAC Championship defense on February 14.
The schedule features 53 games, with a mix of 26 non-conference games, and 27 Mid-American Conference games. The Falcons will face all 11 MAC teams at least twice during the 2014 campaign.
Bowling Green begins the season with a three-game series at Belmont University. The Bruins, members of the Ohio Valley Conference, went 38-20 in 2013. All-time, the Falcons are 1-0 against Belmont, winning an extra-innings affair in 2002.
The next weekend, the Orange and Brown will travel to Murray, Ky. for a matchup with Murray State for the second straight season. Last season, the Thoroughbreds went 21-33, but swept the Falcons in a three-game set.
A midweek game at Dayton is scheduled for February 25, the first of an annual home-and-home midweek series between the two schools. Last season, neither game was played due to inclement weather.
The only 2013 NCAA Tournament participant on the schedule is Georgia Tech, whom the Falcons will face in a three-game series from February 28 – March 2. GT, which is located in Atlanta, went 37-27 a season ago, advancing to the NCAA Nashville (Vanderbilt) Regional.
The Falcons will close out their 18-game road trip to begin the season with the Spring Break trip, which will see the Orange and Brown play games in both North Carolina and Florida. The trip will begin with a three-game set against Big South foe, High Point. Last year, the Panthers went 29-29. Following that three-game series, the Falcons will continue down to Winter Haven, Fla., where they’ll play five games at the RussMatt Invitational to finish Spring Break.
Following the Spring Break trip, the Falcons will finally play their home opener, hosting Eastern Michigan University in a non-conference game on March 18 (Tuesday). The following weekend, Bowling Green travels to Muncie, Ind. to begin MAC play against Ball State. That series will feature a weekend-long rematch of the 2013 MAC Championship game which saw the Falcons claim a 7-0 victory.
The 2014 MAC schedule does not include a weekend series with arch-rival Toledo, so the Falcons will face the Rockets in a pair of midweek matchups. The first of two games will take play at Toledo’s Scott Park on Tuesday, March 25. The second matchup will take place at BGSU’s Steller Field on Tuesday, April 8.
The Falcons will play a total of nine series against MAC opponents in 2014, with five of them taking place away from Steller Field. Besides the series at Ball State, the Falcons will travel to Western Michigan (April 4-6), Akron (April 18-20), Miami (May 2-4), and Buffalo (May 15-17). The Orange and Brown will play host to Northern Illinois (March 28-30), Central Michigan (April 11-13), Kent State (April 25-27), and Ohio (May 9-11) in MAC play.
Other non-conference midweek matchups include: at Cincinnati (April 2), Dayton (April 16), at Michigan (April 22), at Eastern Michigan (May 6), and Xavier (May 13). The midweek games against Toledo and Eastern Michigan will not count toward the Mid-American Conference standings.
In all, the Falcons will play 16 games inside the friendly confines of Warren E. Steller Field in 2014.
