According to CollegeBaseballInsider.com, 36 out of the 301 NCAA Division-I baseball schools have released their regular season schedules for the 2015 spring season thus far.
The 36 schools include:
- St. Bonaventure (Atlantic 10)
- College of Charleston (Colonial)
- UNC – Wilmington (Colonial)
- Florida St. (ACC)
- Georgia Tech (ACC)
- Virginia (ACC)
- Jacksonville (Atlantic Sun)
- Radford (Big South)
- Florida (SEC)
- Georgia (SEC)
- LSU (SEC)
- Texas A&M (SEC)
- Georgia Southern (Sun Belt)
- Georgia St. (Sun Belt)
- Troy (Sun Belt)
- Indiana (Big 10)
- Iowa (Big 10)
- Maryland (Big 10)
- Michigan (Big 10)
- Nebraska (Big 10)
- Ohio State (Big 10)
- Oklahoma State (Big 12)
- TCU (Big 12)
- Eastern Michigan (Mid-American)
- Miami of Ohio (Mid-American)
- Missouri St. (Missouri Valley)
- Cal Poly (Big West)
- Long Beach St. (Big West)
- UC Santa Barbara (Big West)
- New Mexico (Mountain West)
- UNLV (Mountain West)
- Oregon (Pac-12)
- Oregon St. (Pac-12)
- Stanford (Pac-12)
- Utah (Pac-12)
- Washington (Pac-12)
In addition to schools releasing their schedules, there will be 22 new head coaches who are entering their first season at the helm of their respective programs. These coaches include Cliff Godwin (East Carolina), Mark Kingston (South Florida), David Pierce (Tulane), Raphael Cerrato (Rhode Island), Justin Haire (Campbell), Ryan Mau (Longwood University), Scott Friedholm (UNC – Asheville), Chris Lemonis (Indiana), Troy Percival (UC – Riverside), Mike Glavine (Northeastern), Geoff Goff (Louisiana Tech), Grant Achilles (Brown), John Delaney (Quinnipiac), Mark Van Ameyde (Eastern Michigan), Bo Durkac (Illinois State), Alex Trezza (Long Island), Kevin Moulder (Murray State), Rick Robinson (Tennessee – Martin), Tracy Smith (Arizona State), Matt Deggs (Sam Houston State), Chris Curry (Arkansas – Little Rock), and Brian Green (New Mexico State).
In contrast, Siena head coach Tony Rossi, is currently the longest tenured D-I baseball coach at the same school – having served in his current position with the program since 1970.
Beginning this season, the NCAA will use baseballs with flatter seams in order to boost offense. This decision came amidst reduced offense in college baseball stemming from the switch to a less powerful bat in 2011. Prior to the beginning of the 2011 season, the NCAA required players to switch from a BESR (Ball Exit Speed Ration) metal bat to what is known as a BBCOR (Bat-Ball Coefficient of Restitution) metal bat that more accurately measures the “trampoline effect” of the ball coming off the bat. As a result, bat manufacturers have had to make their bats stiffer in order to reduce the trampoline effect of the ball coming off the bat, which decreases the average distance traveled of a batted ball.
With a flatter-seamed baseball, pitchers will have greater difficulty throwing off-speed pitches such as curveballs and changeups, as well as having trouble adding movement to their fastballs, giving hitters better ability to react to pitches.
Although conferences are not required to switch to the flatter-seamed balls during the regular season, many programs will make the switch in order to prepare for the postseason.
For an updated list of schools releasing regular season schedules, follow this link to CollegeBaseballInsider.com:
http://www.collegebaseballinsider.com/15Preseason/15scheds.html
*Section Photo credit to Richard Hamm, Online Athens/Athens Banner-Herald; Featured Photo (above) credit to Geoff Burke, USA Today Sports
