BLACKSBURG – A home slate that features 15 games against teams that made the 2014 NCAA Baseball Championship highlights the Virginia Tech baseball 2015 schedule, which has been released today. In all, the Hokies will play 23 games against NCAA teams from a year ago and 38 of their 56 slated for the upcoming season are against teams ranked in the top 100 of last year’s final RPI.
“With the 2015 schedule, we see a lot of familiar faces as well as some new ones ,” head baseball coach Patrick Mason said. “Collectively the schedule will challenge us on a daily basis and provide our fans a great opportunity to come to English field and see some great baseball.”
A surprise non-NCAA tournament team will welcome Tech for a season-opening three-game series in Macon, Georgia. The Hokies will face Mercer, a squad that won 38 games in the Atlantic Sun and finished with a RPI of 47, on Friday, Feb. 13 through Sunday, Feb. 15.
The following weekend, the Hokies travel to Buies Creek, North Carolina, to play a pair of games against Rider and host Campbell, with a doubleheader schedule for Friday, Feb. 20 – a game versus each team – and then single games Saturday (Rider) and Sunday (Campbell).
Tech will welcome Radford to English Field for its home opener on Tuesday, Feb. 24 with first pitch scheduled for 3:00 p.m. before hosting Toledo for a four-game home series that weekend – Friday, Feb. 27 through Sunday March 1. The Hokies will complete a seven-game homestand with a Tuesday-Wednesday series with 2014 NCAA Super Regional participant College of Charleston on March 3-4.
“I really like how our schedule is set up prior to ACC play,” Mason said. “We are going to be able to play some top teams on the road the first two weekends and then we return home for seven difficult games. That is great, because we will know a lot about our club as we head to Wake Forest for conference play.”
Starting the conference slate the next weekend, the Hokies will open their ACC schedule at Wake Forest (March 6-8) and will also make stops at NCAA teams Florida State (March 27-29) and Miami (April 10-12) and travel to Duke (April 24-26) and Pittsburgh (May 14-16), which will conclude their regular sesaon.
The first four ACC teams to visit Blacksburg in the spring all made the NCAAs in 2014 and Tech will open their home ACC schedule with College World Series runner-up Virginia (March 13-15). The following weekend Clemson (March 20-22) comes to town, which actually continues a string of 10 straight home games with Liberty (March 17), Radford (March 18), Norfolk State (March 24) and ETSU (March 25) all coming to English Field in that stretch.
NCAA teams Georgia Tech (April 3-5) and North Carolina (April 17-19) also come to campus and the Hokies conclude the home ACC slate with Boston College (May 1-3). VMI (March 31), Charlotte (April 7), Appalachian State (April 28) and West Virginia (May 5), who has not been to Blacksburg since 2004, completes the home non-conference portion of Tech’s schedule.
“Our ACC schedule is always going to be challenging, that’s the nature of playing in the best conference in college baseball,” Mason said. “I’m excited to see our fans come support us at English field as we host such great competition.”
The ACC Baseball Championship is scheduled for May 19-24 in Durham, N.C. The six-day event will follow the same format as last year, with seeds one through six gaining automatic berths into the pod system, while seeds seven through 10 will play a single-elimination game to earn the last two spots in the pods.
