Lawless Republic
Fansided

BYU Baseball: Cougars face soft schedule in rebooting year

By Shaun Gordon

ANAHEIM, CA - MAY 01: Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim left his bat on a tarp during batting practice at Angel Stadium on May 1, 2018 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images)
ANAHEIM, CA - MAY 01: Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim left his bat on a tarp during batting practice at Angel Stadium on May 1, 2018 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

The 2019 BYU Baseball schedule is out, and it’s a relatively soft schedule for a team that’s trying to reboot after a disappointing 2018 season.

Expectations were high for BYU Baseball last season. After a successful 2017 campaign, the Cougars were picked to win the West Coast Conference in 2018.

Instead they took dead last. BYU finished with a 22-28 record, going 11-16 in conference.

In the Cougars’ defense, they were a relatively young team, with only four seniors that saw significant playing time.

Those four are gone for 2019, as are Daniel Schneeman and David Clawson. Both were selected in this year’s MLB draft, and both elected to turn pro.

There are core players coming back, such as Brock Hale, Keaton Kringlen, Brian Hsu, Mitch McIntyre, Drew Zimmerman, Jordan Wood, and Jake Suddreth.

With those players back, this isn’t really a rebuilding year for the Cougars. It’s more of a rebooting one.

And they’ll play a relatively soft schedule in an effort to turn things around.

The Cougars announced their 2019 schedule, and they’ll only play three teams that made the NCAA Tournament in 2018. In all, only be seven of their 52 games come against 2018 tournament teams (Washington, Gonzaga, Oral Roberts).

They’ll play plenty of games away from Larry H. Miller Field, though. 30 of their games are outside of Provo, including their first ten games.

Here’s the schedule (home games in bold):

  • Feb. 15-16: vs. Northwestern – 3 games (Mesa, AZ)
  • Feb. 18: vs. California (Mesa, AZ)
  • Feb. 21: at Texas A&M Corpus Christi
  • Feb. 22: vs. Ohio State (Corpus Christi, TX)
  • Feb. 23: vs. Oral Roberts (Corpus Christi, TX)
  • Feb. 28-Mar. 2: at Lamar – 3 games
  • Mar. 5: Utah Valley
  • Mar. 7-9: Milwaukee – 4 games
  • Mar. 14-16: at Gonzaga – 3 games
  • Mar. 19: at Utah Valley
  • Mar. 21-23: Portland – 3 games
  • Mar. 26: Oregon
  • Mar. 28-30: St. Mary’s – 3 games
  • Apr. 2: at Utah
  • Apr. 4-16: at San Diego – 3 games
  • Apr. 9: Utah
  • Apr. 11-13: Pepperdine – 3 games
  • Apr. 18-20: at Washington – 3 games
  • Apr. 25-27: at Pacific – 3 games
  • Apr. 29: at Cal
  • May 2-4: at Loyola Marymount – 3 games
  • May 6: at San Diego State
  • May 9-11: San Francisco – 3 games
  • May 14: at Utah
  • May 16-18: Santa Clara – 3 games

Scheduling a fairly easy slate has advantages and disadvantages.

On one hand, the Cougars should be able to pick up more wins, and hopefully climb back above .500.

On the other hand, if BYU wants to make the NCAA Tournament, they’ll have to finish way over .500, since their strength of schedule is weaker.

For the Cougar Cagers, it ultimately all comes down to winning games.

Home/BYU Baseball