BLACKSBURG – Another challenging regular-season schedule awaits Virginia Tech baseball as the Hokies will face 19 teams, a total of 43 games against squads that advanced to their respective conference tournaments a year ago and the schedule also includes 34 games against teams that finished with an RPI better than 100. The breakdown of the 56-game slate features contests against eight different conferences, seven each versus teams from the Big South and Southern, and in seven different states, with 39 of those taking place in the Commonwealth of Virginia, including 28 at English Field.
Of the other games in the state, the Hokies will play two of them in Pulaski, at historic Calfee Park, the home of the New York Yankees’ Rookie affiliate. The ninth oldest professional Minor League Baseball park in use in the country, Calfee Park was acquired by Shelor Motor Mile, who has put more than $7 million of improvements and upgrades in both the park and the Jackson Park Inn. The Hokies will face Radford on Tuesday, April 12 with a 6:30 p.m. start as a neutral-site game and they will play Duke on Friday, April 22 at 7 p.m. as the host team, which opens their three-game ACC series.
“I’m really excited about our 2016 schedule and I really like the way the first couple of nonconference weekends set us up for ACC play,” head baseball coach Patrick Mason said. “There is no tougher baseball conference in the country than the ACC and I’m looking forward to our guys competing against the best teams week in and week out.
“We also have been given a great opportunity to be able to play a pair of games at nearby Calfee Park, a minor league venue that has showed vast improvements over the past couple of years. The game against Radford should draw a great crowd and we’re expeting Hokie Nation to turn out for our ACC-opening game against Duke that Friday night.”
The season starts on Friday, Feb. 19 in Charlestown, S.C., with the Hokies playing a three-game series at The Citadel. The opener is set for a 5 p.m. first pitch. The following weekend, Tech will face three teams in Norfolk, Va., including Old Dominion on Saturday, Feb. 27 with that game set to start at 4 p.m.
Tech’s home opener is scheduled between those two weekends, a 3 p.m. game against ETSU on Tuesday, Feb. 23, and after coming back from Norfolk, the Hokies will host an 11-game homestand. It starts Tuesday, March 1 with NCAA participant Radford, includes a four-game weekend series against Quinnipiac, a two-game midweek set with Campbell, and continues with an ACC-opening weekend against Miami (March 11-13), a team that advanced to the College World Series a season ago. The homestand will finish with Liberty on March 15.
The rest of the ACC home slate for Tech will see NCAA participant Notre Dame (March 24-26), Pittsburgh (April 15-17), Duke (April 23-24) and Wake Forest (May 13-15) play at English Field.
ACC road opponents for the Hokies this season includes trips to Atlanta, Georgia to face the Yellow Jackets (March 18-20), Louisville, Kentucky to play the Cardinals for the first time as an ACC member (April 1-3), Chapel Hill, North Carolina for a three-game set with the Tar Heels (April 8-10), Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts to play Boston College (April 29-May 1) and will conclude with a drive up to Charlottesville to conclude the regular season with Virginia (May 19-21), the defending national champions.
The non-conference schedule for Tech includes a total of three games against Radford, a home-and-home with the third being played at Calfee Park, a home-and-home with VMI, a home-and-home with Liberty and a three-game series at English Field against Alcorn State (May 7-8). The remainder of the schedule has William & Mary coming to Blacksburg for a midweek game on April 5, and Tech playing at Western Carolina on April 20 and at West Virginia on May 3.
The entire 2016 Virginia Tech schedule can be viewed by CLICKING HERE.
