MANHATTAN, Kan. – The 2016 K-State baseball season will get underway on February 19 at UC Riverside while the home slate features Creighton, Oklahoma State, Texas, Nebraska, Wichita State and KU as head coach Brad Hill announced the entire 56-game slate.
The Wildcats’ upcoming campaign features 22 opponents from 12 conferences and runs from February 19-May 21. Six opponents competed in NCAA postseason play last year.
“The schedule will provide numerous challenges with strong regional and conference opponents for our team that returns a nice nucleus of veteran players,” said Hill. “Our new players will need to adapt quickly to playing quality opponents on the road as our season opens with a tough 10-day road trip to California and Arizona. Hopefully this will better prepare them for the rugged Big 12 Conference schedule.”
Following a 10-day trip out west that features a four-game set against UC Riverside followed by two contests each against the Pac-12’s Oregon State and Utah in Surprise, Arizona, the Wildcats open their 29-game home schedule on March 4 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff to start a three-game series and 12-game homestand.
Throughout the month of March, K-State plays just one road game (at Creighton on March 22) among its 18 overall contests. The Big 12 season gets underway with a three-game set March 24-26 against Oklahoma State, which finished second in the 2015 conference standings. It will be the first time since 2013 that K-State opens its Big 12 slate at home. Other weekend series for the Wildcats in March are versus Milwaukee (March 11-13) and Western Carolina (March 18-20).
“We have a nice homestand in early March with three consecutive non-conference weekends in Manhattan before opening another competitive season of Big 12 play,” added Hill. “We are always excited to play in front of our great fans at Tointon Family Stadium where we have ranked in top-30 nationally in attendance the last three years.”
After a stretch of four straight road games that begins with a three-game set at Texas Tech April 1-3, the Wildcats play their second home conference series against the 2015 Big 12 Baseball Championship winner, Texas, from April 8-10 in Manhattan.
The Wildcats host Baylor April 22-24, but following the three-game series against the Bears, K-State enters a stretch of 10 road matchups over a 15-game span to close out the season. K-State plays a midweek contest at Wichita State on April 26 to open the stretch and also takes part in weekend series at Iowa (April 29-May 1), Oklahoma (May 6-8), and TCU (May 19-21). The Hawkeyes and Horned Frogs both reached the NCAA postseason in 2015, with TCU advancing as far as the final four teams in the College World Series.
After home games against Grand Canyon and Wichita State on April 27 and May 3, respectively, K-State’s slate in Manhattan comes to a close with the Sunflower Showdown series against KU May 13-15.
K-State plays home-and-home midweek games against Creighton, Nebraska, Omaha and Wichita State while it also hosts midweek contests against Stephen F. Austin (March 15-16) and Oral Roberts (March 30) in addition to Grand Canyon.
The Wildcats have previously faced 19 of its opponents in school history while the meetings against UC Riverside, UAPB and Western Carolina will be the first between the programs.
The 22 opponents had a combined record of 656-560 (.539) in 2015.
The 2016 Big 12 Baseball Championship is set for May 25-29, 2016 at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City, the tournament’s host site for 15 of the 19 years. In 2015, K-State made its eighth trip over the last nine seasons to the postseason tournament, which was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the first time.
Information about season tickets for the 2016 home schedule will be made available later this week.
The Wildcats finished last year with a 27-30 record and sixth in the Big 12 standings with a 10-14 conference mark. The squad returns 16 letterwinners and two redshirts, who are slated to be joined by 18 newcomers (12 freshmen).
