CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The Charlotte 49ers baseball team will take on a grueling 56-game schedule featuring 22 opponents, who racked up nearly 700 wins last season, with six of them playing in the NCAA postseason. The 2018 schedule has 32 home games in all, three Uptown, with the grind of 30 Conference USA games mixed in.
“The vision for our program is simple,” began Head Coach Loren Hibbs. “Compete in the top tier of Conference USA with the goal of winning a regular season and/or tournament championship. We have scheduled with this philosophy for many, many years and I think in order to be the best, you have to play the best.”
Opening weekend will feature the Niners hosting Iona for a three-game series on February 16-18. A five-game road trip follows starting with a midweek trip to N.C. State. The Wolfpack, who played in the Lexington Regional championship game, split their two meetings last season with the Niners. A SEC weekend at Georgia on February 23-25 follows during the second weekend of February as both teams also split their midweek series back in 2016. The trip wraps up and ends February with the first of a home-and-home against Charleston Southern on the 28th.
March begins on the 2nd with a home weekend against Siena, featuring the Niners annual doubleheader on Saturday. After a Tuesday trip to High Point, the Pirates of East Carolina come to Hayes Stadium for an in-state rivalry showdown March 9-11.
The first of the previously announced three games Uptown at BB&T Ballpark will be March 13th as the Niners will be the visiting team against Wake Forest. The Niners took one of the two against the Demon Deacons last season, who won their Winston-Salem regional and nearly clinched a spot in the College World Series.
Conference USA play begins on March 16th at home with FIU, taking two from the Panthers in Miami last season, before hosting Arkansas in a midweek two-game set on the 20th and 21st. The first contest with the 45-win Razorbacks will be at BB&T Ballpark before playing the next day inside Hayes Stadium. Arkansas nearly found themselves in the Super Regionals forcing a regional-deciding game vs. Missouri last June.
The first C-USA road trip of the year takes the Niners to Murfreesboro for a set at Middle Tennessee on March 23-25. The Niners quickly return home for a highly-anticipated showdown with North Carolina on March 27th back in Uptown. March ends with a three-game league series at home vs. UAB. The Blazers series will be a Thursday-Saturday series due to Easter weekend.
April will begin with seven of the next eight games for Charlotte happening on the road starting with a Tuesday trip to UNCG, a Clemson regional participant, followed by a trip down south to take on Florida Atlantic. The lone home game during this stretch is the return trip by Charleston Southern on the 10th. The 49ers quickly head back out for their second-straight league series on the road traveling to Louisiana Tech April 13-15.
High Point, Old Dominion and Wake Forest all highlight a five-game home stand upon return before the Niners make just their second-ever trip to Houston battling Rice in a C-USA three-game series April 27-29. The longest home stand of the year opens May with a seven-gamer starting, the first against Winthrop on May 2nd.
The final Conference USA home sets will begin with WKU on May 4-6 and end with Marshall a week later May 11-13. The final midweek tilt will be at Winthrop on May 15th before the regular season ends at UTSA on May 17-19 in the final C-USA series.
The Conference USA tournament will once again take place at MGM Park in Biloxi, Mississippi the weekend of April 23-27. The 49ers put together a 34-24 mark in 2017 which featured a deep run in the C-USA tournament.
The Niners will look to once compete for a C-USA Championship after posting an 18-12 record in league play last season. League sweeps took place against Middle Tennessee, WKU and Marshall while other series victories came against FIU, UAB and Louisiana Tech.
N.C. State, Wake Forest, Arkansas, North Carolina, UNCG and Rice were all regional teams a season ago.
“We will continue to play a very aggressive non-conference schedule,” finished Hibbs. “We schedule as many quality RPI games as possible to position our program for a NCAA at-large selection. Combine that with the strength of our C-USA schedule and we should have another top-50 strength of schedule overall this season.”
Game times for all home games will be released at a later date. Start times for the road contests will be updated online as they become available. Season tickets for the 2018 baseball start at just $49 and will go on sale in December.
2018 Charlotte Baseball Schedule
