UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State baseball head coach Rob Cooper announced the team’s 2017 schedule Monday, which includes trips around the country and regional and Big Ten matchups at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.
The Nittany Lions are scheduled to host six weekend series and seven midweek games for a total of 25 home dates. Student season tickets are on sale now, and full ticket, promotional and radio and TV broadcast information will be announced at a later date.
Penn State will compete against six teams coming off NCAA Tournament appearances in 2016, opening the season at TCU (Feb. 17-19), which is coming off its third-straight College World Series appearance and its fourth in the last six years. The Horned Frogs traveled from Fort Worth, Texas to Penn State for a three-game series last May.
“We’ve always said, since we’ve been at Penn State, that we want to challenge our guys, challenge our program and play the best teams that we possibly can,” said head coach Rob Cooper. “First of all, being in the Big Ten Conference you’re going to play great teams day in and day out.
“We feel like with the teams we have on our schedule we have a chance to make our team better and hopefully be a tournament team at the end of the year.”
The Nittany Lions will face another NCAA tourney team the next weekend, as they will host defending Big East Champion Xavier for a three-game series Feb. 24-26 at the USA Baseball National Training Center in Cary, N.C.
Penn State will then host a total four reigning tournament teams, including defending America East Champion Binghamton (Mar. 28). The other three comprise three of Penn State’s four home Big Ten series: conference champion Ohio State (Apr. 7-9), Minnesota (May 5-7) and Nebraska (May 18-20).
The Lions will be home for Blue-White Weekend, hosting Northwestern Apr. 21-23. Their four away Big Ten series include Michigan (Mar. 31-Apr. 2), Maryland (Apr. 14-16), Iowa (Apr. 28-30) and Indiana (May 12-14).
Other highlights include non-conference contests against West Virginia and Pitt and a spring break trip to northern California. The series against West Virginia expands to a home-and-home series in 2017, as the Mountaineers will visit Medlar Field Mar. 22 and the Nittany Lions will visit Morgantown May 9. The home-and-home series with Pitt continues with a pair of April games. The first will be in Pittsburgh Apr. 4 and the second Apr. 18 at Medlar.
The Lions will play seven games in eight days on the West Coast, opening with a three-game series at Pacific (Mar. 4-6) in Stockton, Calif., playing one game at UC Davis (Mar. 8) and concluding the trip at Sacramento State (Mar. 9-11). It will conclude a stretch of 13 games on the road to start the season.
Penn State is scheduled to open its home slate Thursday and Friday, Mar. 16-17 against Delaware. The four-game series will conclude at Delaware with two more games over the weekend.
The Nittany Lions will then open an eight-game homestand starting Mar. 21 against Bucknell. It will also include West Virginia, a four-game series against Columbia (Mar. 24-26), Binghamton and Cornell (Mar. 29). Penn State will also host Bucknell again Apr. 11 and Lafayette (Apr. 26).
All dates, times and opponents are subject to change.
2017 Penn State Schedule
