(Courtesy of Stetson Media Relations)
When the Stetson University baseball team takes to the field at Melching Field in February, the Hatters will face a challenging slate that includes a pair of College World Series participants from 2014 as well as three other clubs that won in excess of 40 games last year.
Fortunately for the Hatters, many of those games in 2015 will take place on the home field, with 35 home games on the schedule for this spring.
The 2015 schedule includes the return of an old rival, as the Florida Gators will visit Melching Field for the first time since the 2009 season. That game is scheduled for Tuesday, March 24.
“I think it is a very demanding schedule,” Stetson head coach Pete Dunn said. “We are playing all of the big three Florida schools for the first time in a while, with two of them at home and we will also have Bethune-Cookman, South Florida and FIU at home.”
The home schedule also includes a game against Michigan out of the Big Ten as well as non-conference series against LaSalle, Central Michigan, Penn, Harvard and Long Island. The Atlantic Sun Conference home schedule includes series against Kennesaw State, Northern Kentucky, North Florida and Florida Gulf Coast.
“The conference schedule is different without Mercer and East Tennessee State, which are two awfully good programs,” Dunn said. “Unfortunately, we are going to go from eight teams in the tournament back to six, so every conference game will be very important.”
Dunn, who will be in his 36th season leading the Stetson program, will also take his team on the road for a pair of difficult non-conference series. The Hatters will return a series against an Ole Miss team that advanced to the College World Series last year and will travel to the home of that event, TD Ameritrade Stadium in Omaha, for a three-game series against Creighton.
“The trip to Ole Miss will be a challenge, but we knew that going into last year,” Dunn said. “The Creighton trip is really exciting because it will give our guys a taste of Omaha. We are going to get to play there during the regular season with our goal of going back to play in the post-season.”
Stetson last played at Creighton in 2002. It will be the first trip for Stetson baseball to Oxford for a series against the Rebels, who is the only team on the schedule the Hatters don’t own a victory against. Ole Miss leads the series 4-0 after sweeping three games at Melching Field last spring.
Two of the teams that will visit Melching Field are relative newcomers to the Stetson schedule – LaSalle and Long Island. Both teams have appeared on the Stetson schedule just once before, with the Hatters taking victories over the Explorers in 1977 and over the Blackbirds in 1994.
Overall, Stetson has a winning series record against 14 of the 21 teams on the 2015 schedule. The two most frequently played opponents on the schedule – South Florida and Jacksonville – also have two of the closest series records against Stetson. The Hatters are 82-79 all-time against USF and are 80-79-2 all-time against JU.
“It is a good schedule,” Dunn said. “Gulf Coast will be in here against this year, and Kennesaw is in, and we all know what they did last year. With those conference series, along with non-conference games against Florida, Florida State, South Florida, FIU and Bethune-Cookman, makes this a really good schedule.”
2015 Stetson Baseball Schedule
