Note: Each day this week, White & Blue Review will take a look at the upcoming Creighton Baseball season. We’ll look at the outfielders on Wednesday, the infielders on Thursday, and the pitchers/catchers on Friday. Today we look at the opponents they’ll face.
Creighton’s home opener is on April 2 against Indiana State, and they will play 11 of their 23 home games at Rosenblatt, with the remainder to be played at the CU Sports Complex. But they open their season this Saturday, and because its still winter up here in Omaha, the season begins where it always does: on the road. In fact, its a season-opening 21 game road trip, which starts with a doubleheader in Conway, Arkansas against host Central Arkansas, as well as SIU-Edwardsville. Central Arkansas finished 22-30 a year ago (10-21, 9th place in the Southland Conference), while SIU-E is in the second year of their four-year transition to Division 1 and finished 15-39 a year ago.
The following weekend, they travel even further south to Nacogdoches, Texas and the Stephen F. Austin Invitational, where they’ll take on Louisiana Monroe, a 32-27 team from a year ago that made it to the championship of their conference tournament, but lost 13 letterwinners to graduation; Northwestern State, who finished 26-26 but lost 16 letterwinners; and the host, Stephen F. Austin, a 23-32 team from last year.
Those first two weekends of games offer the Jays a great opportunity to get some early wins and momentum, something they were unable to accomplish last year. Their slow start was blamed by many outside the program for the team’s season-long struggles; the schedule this year seems set up to avoid a repeat of that fate.
The first weekend in March has the Jays in Huntsville, Texas for the Bearcat Invitational, where they’ll play two games each against Northern Colorado and Sam Houston State, the latter being the Southland Conference champion and an NCAA Tournament team from a year ago, with many of their best players returning. A midweek game against UT-Arlington, who finished fifth in the Southland Conference at 30-26 a year ago, wraps up the Jays’ Texas swing.
On Friday, March 12, the Jays come north to Minneapolis for the Metrodome Tournament. The Gophers will likely be the toughest early-season test for the Jays; Minnesota finished 40-19 and in second place in the Big Ten a year ago, advancing to the NCAA Regionals, and they return 20 players from that team including most of their key contributors. Other teams in the tourney include South Dakota State and Harvard.
Kansas State and Kansas round out the Jays’ non-conference, ’09 tourney-team lineup, as they will face KSU in Manhattan on March 16. Creighton and Kansas will play a home-and-home set, as the Jays will visit Lawrence on March 23 and the Jayhawks will play at Rosenblatt on April 7.
The annual three-game series with Nebraska also resumes, with the first matchup coming in Lincoln on April 6. Two games at Rosenblatt follow, on April 20 and May 18. Other teams on the non-conference slate are Iowa, Air Force, Seattle, New Orleans, and defending Horizon League champion Illinois-Chicago in a three-game weekend series in the Windy City.
Their MVC slate has home series against the Sycamores, Illinois State, Evansville, and Wichita State, with road series against Southern Illinois, Bradley, and Missouri State. The MVC Tournament will once again be at Eck Stadium in Wichita, and will happen the week of May 25-29.
34 of the team’s 54 games will be broadcast on either KOZN (1620 AM) or KOIL (1180 AM), including 22 home games, 12 road games, plus all postseason games. The first broadcast will be the March 16 game at Kansas State.