Ohio University Baseball, Rob Smith
The 2016 slate features 24 home games at Bob Wren Stadium — including a battle with in-state rival Ohio State. The Bobcats are also set to take on Purdue and Notre Dame in a pair of weekend series in Indiana as well as play a home-and-home midweek set against rival Marshall. The schedule features 24 Mid-American Conference contests.
“It’s going to be a good challenge for us,” said Smith. “We’ve got some quality non-conference opponents. Purdue, a good, quality Big Ten team. We’ll have a three-game series at Notre Dame. We’re excited about those. We think those teams, along with the other teams on our schedule, are going to provide us a very competitive preview before we hit the conference season.”
The Bobcats open the new campaign with an 11-game road trip. Ohio begins the season with a three-game set at UNC Asheville (Feb. 19-21) before traveling to Birmingham, Ala., to visit UAB (Feb. 26-28). The Bobcats make a brief stop in Georgia to play Kennesaw State (March 1) before closing out the season-opening trip with a visit to Spartanburg, S.C., to take on Wofford (March 4-6) in a four-game series.
Ohio returns to the Wren for four games against IPFW (March 11-13) before playing host to Northern Kentucky (March 15) in its first midweek home game of the year.
The Bobcats will then meet Big Ten Conference foe Purdue in a three-game neutral site set (March 18-20) in Kokomo, Ind.
Ohio is then slated to host five straight contests in Athens, starting with a matchup against in-state foe Youngstown State (March 22). The Bobcats begin MAC play by hosting West Division foe Northern Illinois (March 25-27) before welcoming the Buckeyes March 29) to the Wren.
“It’ll be fun,” said Smith of hosting Ohio State. “It’s always good when you can bring quality teams into your park. To have them come down and play, we’re excited about that opportunity. We’re excited to have the opportunity to play them in our home stadium and let our fans experience that and let our players experience that. We expect, obviously, that they’ll be a very good team, and it’ll be a challenge, but it’ll be one our guys are going to look forward to.”
The Bobcats visit Muncie, Ind., for their first road league series of the year at Ball State (April 1-3) in a rematch of the 2015 MAC Championship title game. The remainder of Ohio’s MAC slate features home series against Buffalo (April 8-10), Kent State (April 22-24), Central Michigan (May 6-8) and Miami (May 19-21) as well as road sets at Bowling Green (April 15-17) and Western Michigan (May 13-15).
“Every week’s going to be vitally important,” said Smith of the team’s conference schedule. “I believe we’re going to have one of the more challenging schedules in the league. Of our eight series, three of them are going to be against teams that I would predict are going to be somewhere in the top four or five teams in our league. It’s going to be challenging. We’ve got our hands full.”
Ohio’s remaining home midweek games feature reigning Ohio Valley Conference tournament champion Morehead State (April 19) and Marshall. The Bobcats will visit Eastern Kentucky (April 5), Dayton (April 12), Marshall (April 20) and Morehead State (May 3) for the remainder of their road midweek games. Ohio’s final non-conference road series of the year will take place in South Bend, Ind., with a visit to Notre Dame (April 29-May 1).
The 2016 MAC Championship will be held May 25-29 at All Pro Freight Stadium in Avon, Ohio. The winner receives the league’s automatic bid to the 2016 NCAA Championship.
NCAA Championship Regionals are scheduled for June 3-6 with Super Regionals being held June 10-13. The 2016 NCAA College World Series is slated to run June 18-29 from TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb.
The Bobcats closed 2015 with 36 victories — the second-most in a season in program history. The regular season was highlighted by a 10-7 win at Kentucky — the Bobcats’ first over a team out of the Southeastern Conference since recording a 15-4 win at Kentucky in 1997. The Bobcats carried their early season success over into the 2015 MAC slate, winning five of nine series. Ohio took a weekend series at Kent State, marking the Bobcats’ first series win over the Golden Flashes since 1998. After winning just 11 games in 2014, the ’15 team’s 25-win improvement represented the largest turnaround in the NCAA last season.
No. 3-seeded Ohio won the 2015 MAC Championship and earned the conference’s automatic bid to the 2015 NCAA Championship with a 6-2 win over No. 5-seeded Ball State in the title game on May 24 at All Pro Freight Stadium in Avon, Ohio. The Bobcats earned their first conference tournament title and NCAA bid since 1997.
The Bobcats drew the No. 4 seed at the 2015 NCAA Championship Champaign Regional. Ohio fell to No. 6 nationally-seeded Illinois, 10-3, in the opening round on Friday (May 29), then fell to No. 3 regionally-seeded Wright State in a rain-delayed elimination game on Sunday (May 31), 8-3, at Illinois Field.
Among the returning players from last year’s championship squad are MAC Player of the Year Mitch Longo (Mayfield, Ohio), All-MAC Defensive Team selection Manny De Jesus (Caguas, Puerto Rico) and right-handed pitchers Jake Miller (Westerville, Ohio) and Connor Sitz (Westerville, Ohio) and infielder John Adryan (Delran, N.J.), who earned spots on the 2015 All-MAC Championship Team.
