The schedule for the 150th anniversary season of Villanova baseball was released on Tuesday afternoon and the 2016 campaign features 29 home games in addition to road trips to both familiar and new locales. Head coach Joe Godri and his team begin the season on February 19, play the home opener on March 8 and later begin regular season BIG EAST action on April 8. The 56-game schedule features 18 conference games and 38 non-conference dates, with the latter total including four regular season tournaments.
First up at the beginning of the season for the Wildcats will be a three-game series at Houston from February 19-21. The teams will be facing each other on the diamond for the first time ever and the Cougars are one of several high-profile opponents on the 2016 schedule. Houston won 43 games and hosted an NCAA Regional last season. Villanova will also play a midweek game at Florida State (Wednesday, March 2) during its Spring Break trip to the Sunshine State. That contest is a rematch of a three-game series between the Wildcats and Seminoles from the 2013 season. Florida State won 44 games, claimed the ACC title and reached an NCAA Super Regional last year.
Other highlights of the early-season trip to Florida are a return to the Snowbird Baseball Classic (February 26-29) and an appearance at the Westin Lake Mary Stetson Invitational (March 4-6). This is the fifth straight season that the Wildcats will travel to Port Charlotte for the Snowbird Baseball Classic. Villanova will face Chicago State, Dartmouth, Boston College and Indiana State in its four-game stay on Florida’s west coast. During the tournament at Stetson, the Wildcats will face the host Hatters in addition to Central Michigan and Illinois. The final game of the tournament versus the Fighting Illini will be the first-ever matchup between the two teams and will be a game that Villanova has circled on the calendar given that the Wildcats roster features nine players from the Prairie State.
Villanova opens its home schedule against Delaware State on Tuesday, March 8 and will host the Big Five Baseball Bash from March 18-20 when it welcomes visiting teams Saint Peter’s, Sacred Heart and Canisius to the Villanova Ballpark at Plymouth. The local tournament is being co-hosted with La Salle and Saint Joseph’s to give the three out-of-town teams a guarantee of three games versus different Philadelphia-area opponents. Prior to the start of conference play, the Wildcats will also host three-game series against both Hartford (March 24-26) and St. Bonaventure (April 1-3).
During the non-conference portion of the schedule, Villanova will travel to Fordham on Saturday, March 12 for a game featuring two of the oldest continually running programs in the history of intercollegiate sports. The Rams debuted in 1860 and are the longest-running college baseball program, while the Wildcats first took the field in 1866 and is among a handful of programs that began during the 1860’s. Villanova and Fordham met each other on the diamond as early as the 1896 season and have played each other 55 times previously. The all-time series is knotted at 27-27-1 but the teams have not met for over 30 years since the 1983 season. Also on the non-conference schedule are traditional rivalry games versus Rutgers and Penn State. The game against the Scarlet Knights is a road contest on Wednesday, April 27, while the Penn State matchup is the Wildcats final home game of the year on Tuesday, May 17.
The round-robin BIG EAST regular season schedule features three home series and three road series, with Villanova starting out at home for the first two weekends of conference action against Butler (April 8-10) and St. John’s (April 15-17). Following a short road trip to Seton Hall (April 22-24), the Wildcats host Creighton from April 29-May 1 in their final home conference series. Villanova then hosts NYIT (May 6-8) in a non-conference series during its bye week from BIG EAST play. The regular season concludes with road series at Georgetown (May 13-15) and Xavier (May 19-21).
Following the conclusion of the regular season, the top four teams in the conference standings will qualify for the BIG EAST Championship. The conference tournament will be held from May 26-29 at Leidos Field at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Md.
