Illinois State head baseball coach Steve Holm has announced his team’s 2020 schedule, which features contests against nine 2019 NCAA Tournament participants, 18 home games at Duffy Bass Field and a spring break trip to Florida.
“We are really looking forward to the slate of teams we’re facing this year,” said Holm. “We have multiple weekends against teams that have the ability to go deep into the postseason. Last year’s schedule allowed us to receive an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament and we hope our 2020 schedule will allow us to do the same.”
Illinois State opens the season at Little Rock (Feb. 14-16), Oklahoma (Feb. 21-23) and Louisiana-Monroe (Feb. 28–March 1), before traveling to SEC opponent Arkansas (March 3) for a Tuesday afternoon contest.
The Redbirds will play eight games over 10 days, with a trio of contests in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 6-8, week-day games at Florida A&M (March 10) and Florida State (March 11) and a weekend series at North Florida (March 13-15) to highlight the non-conference slate.
Illinois State will return to the Midwest for a Tuesday night game at UIC (March 17) and a weekend series at Indiana (March 20-22), before hosting Northwestern for their 2020 home opener on March 24. ISU will also host Butler for a three-game weekend series (March 27-29) and play at Saint Louis (March 31) before beginning Missouri Valley Conference play at Missouri State (April 3-5).
The Redbirds will host in-state rival Illinois on April 7 at Duffy Bass Field. Illinois State will also host Valparaiso that weekend (April 10-12) before making the trip to take on the Illini on their home turf just seven days later (April 14).
The remainder of the regular-season home slate includes MVC match-ups with Dallas Baptist (April 17-19), Bradley (May 1-3) and Southern Illinois (May 14-16), and a non-conference finale with Oral Roberts (May 6). ISU is set to travel to Eastern Illinois (April 15), Northern Illinois (April 21), Indiana State (April 24-26), SIUE (April 28) and Evansville (May 8-10) during the second half of its regular season.
Illinois State’s full 2020 schedule can be found here.
