JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The defending Regular Season Atlantic Sun Conference Champion North Florida baseball team officially unveiled its schedule and opponents for the 2016 season on Tuesday. The Ospreys open up at home with a three-game series against George Washington on Feb. 19, 2016.
The Ospreys are coming off the most successful season in the program’s Division 1 era, winning a program-best, 45 games and capturing the school’s first A-Sun Championship. Head Coach Smoke Laval, the 2015 Atlantic Sun Coach of the Year, enters his sixth season at the helm of the North Florida baseball program.
“We’re looking to build off last year’s success and the first step of that process is putting together a quality group of opponents,” said Laval. “The competition for the top spot in the A-Sun will be hard-fought, as always and we have some tough non-conference opponents just within the state that will really test the strengths of our ball club.”
One of those in-state opponents that appear on the 2015 slate is No. 4 Florida, the reigning Southeastern Conference Tournament Champions. The Ospreys and the Gators will engage in a two-game, mid-week series on March 8 & 9. Florida will come to Harmon Stadium on March 8 for the first time since 2012 when they came in as the No. 1 team in the country and fell to North Florida, 10-5. The two will then square off in Gainesville on March 9.
The Ospreys will play in the Sunshine State for the first 26 games of 2016 with 22 of them occurring at Harmon Stadium. North Florida will host three-game, weekend series against Hartford (Feb. 26-28), Penn (Mach 4-6), UNC Wilmington (March 11-13) and Quinnipiac (March 18-20) before Atlantic Sun Conference play begins on the road at Kennesaw St. on April 1.
Two-game, midweek series against UCF and USF will also be on tap for the 2016 season. The Ospreys will host on April 19 and USF on March 16. The Ospreys will be down in Orlando on Feb. 24 and in Tampa on April 12.
The Mayor’s Cup, that features a mid-week, non-conference match against cross-town rival Jacksonville will be at Harmon Stadium this year on March 2. The Ospreys captured the inaugural cup last season with a 3-2 victory. The annual River City Rumble will be at John Sessions Stadium in 2016 on April 8-10.
The newest member of the Atlantic Sun, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will host the Ospreys in Newark, N.J. May 19-21 in the final regular season series of the year. The 2016 Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament will be hosted by Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. May 25-28.
