Jim Brownlee has always played a challenging schedule early in the baseball season to prepare his team for the month of May. The head coach at Illinois State has continued that philosophy, as the 2005 Redbird baseball schedule consists of four teams that took part in the 2004 NCAA Regionals.
Vanderbilt, Western Kentucky, Missouri and Wichita State all participated in the NCAA Regionals, with Vanderbilt advancing to the Super Regionals. Other highlights on the schedule include a return game with cross-town rival Illinois Wesleyan, a season opening series at perennial power Stetson and an eight-game spring break trip to Bradenton, Fla.
The exciting thing about this schedule is that we will play 21 games before we begin the conference portion of our schedule, said Brownlee, who is entering his third season as the Redbird skipper. This schedule is strong enough to where if we get 35 to 40 wins, our RPI should be high enough to get us an at-large bid to a NCAA Regional.
The season opens up with a three-game series on February 18, in DeLand Fla., against Stetson University. The following weekend the Birds will play in the Music City Classic in Nashville, Tenn, before a second trip to Florida with the eight-game swing to Bradenton.
Illinois State opens up the home schedule on March 23 against Missouri at Redbird Field, where they will play 10 consecutive games from March 23 April 3. The Birds open up Missouri Valley Conference play at home against Creighton on March 25.
The Missouri Valley has implemented a major change in the 2005 schedule, as conference series will now only be three games instead of four, with a game to be played on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The league will be very interesting this year, said Brownlee. There is no clear-cut favorite and only playing three games will put much more emphasis on each league game. I think the scoring will be down a lot in the league.
For the second year in a row, Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan will get together and play the Horenberger-Bass Classic, which will be held this year at Redbird Field on May 3.
The 2005 ConAgra Foods Missouri Valley Conference Baseball Championship will be held in Wichita, Kan., at Eck Stadium on May 25-28.
2005 Schedule
