HAMMOND, La. – Coming off a record-breaking season that included a Southland Conference regular season title, Southeastern Louisiana head baseball coach Matt Riser announced a 54-game schedule Wednesday that will have the Lions playing almost 80 percent of their non-conference games in 2016 against schools from the American Athletic, Big 10, Conference USA, SEC or Sun Belt conferences.
“Year in and year out, we pride ourselves on playing as tough a non-conference schedule as possible,” Riser said. “Scheduling is not easy, by any means, with dates working out for both parties and trying to get that RPI for us. You want the home games, but you have to go on the road and play some quality opponents. I feel like we did that with our non-conference schedule. Three of the four weekends are against Sun Belt Conference opponents.”
Southeastern, which opens the season with an 8-game homestand, has weekend series with UL Lafayette, ULM, and Troy. Midweek opponents include SEC champ LSU, Southern Miss, Tulane and Sun Belt champ South Alabama. The Lions will also participate in the 13th Annual Keith LeClair Classic, competing against Maryland, Tennessee and host East Carolina.
LSU advanced to the College World Series last season for the second time in the last three years. Maryland and UL Lafayette each advanced to Super Regionals while East Carolina, Houston Baptist and Tulane were Regional participants. South Alabama, Troy and the Ragin’ Cajuns were the top three teams in the Sun Belt last season.
The Lions open the season Feb. 19-21 against in-state rival ULM. Following the series with the Warhawks, Southeastern hosts Alcorn State (Feb. 24), Troy (Feb. 26-28) and Tulane (March 2) before heading to Greenville, N.C. for the Keith LeClair Classic.
“We’re really excited about getting to go out to East Carolina,” Riser said. “It’ll be a Regional/Super Regional-type atmosphere all weekend at the Keith LeClair Classic. Coach LeClair is very well known for what he did in his years as a college coach and his legacy lives on after his passing. We’re really appreciative of those guys having us in that tournament. Talk about four quality ballclubs with us, Maryland, East Carolina and Tennessee. All of them have a chance to be Regional, Super Regional, even Omaha-caliber team.”
After back-to-back game against Southern Miss (March 8-9), which returns to the schedule for the first time since the 2008 season, Southeastern opens Southland Conference play with a home series against Incarnate Word (March 11-13).
In addition to UIW, the Lions will welcome Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Nicholls, HBU and New Orleans to Pat Kenelly Diamond at Alumni Field for conference play. Southeastern faces road contests in Southland action at Abilene Christian, Northwestern State, Nicholls, McNeese State, Lamar, New Orleans and Central Arkansas.
The top eight teams in the Southland will qualify for the conference’s postseason tournament which returns to Constellation Field in Sugar Land, Texas for the second-consecutive season, May 25-28.
Southeastern set a school record for attendance last season with more than 31,000 (1,071 per game average) supporting the conference champs. This season, the Lions will play 28 of their 54 games inside the friendly confines of Pat Kenelly Diamond at Alumni Field.
Season tickets will go on sale to the general public in January, but ticket information for the Lions’ 28-game home slate is currently available at www.LionSports.net or by calling the Southeastern Athletics Ticket Office at (985) 549-5466.
Riser and the Lions continue their fall preparations for the upcoming season with a series of intrasquad games this week. First pitches for the practice games are slated for approximately 4 p.m. Thursday, 2 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday. All Southeastern baseball practices are open to the public.
