On Wednesday, the Long Beach State baseball team announced its 2017 schedule.
With a mixture of home and away games, the Dirtbags start the season with eight of their first nine games at home.
LBSU will welcome Oklahoma to Blair Field to kick off the season with a weekend series starting Feb. 17.
From there, the Dirtbags will head to Los Angeles for a road game against USC Feb. 21.
“I think it’s competitive,” Dirtbags coach Troy Buckley said. “When you put the whole body of work [together] — the road schedule with the home schedule — it’s really good. It’ll give us a really good test.”
Included in the team’s early home stretch of games is an exhibition game against Korean professional baseball team NC Dinos March 1.
After their homestand, LBSU will head to North Carolina for a weekend series against the Tarheels March 3. With two series, including its series against Minnesota May 12-14, Buckley thinks it will help the team get noticed on a national level.
“I think a big goal of what we try to do is try to get out of region,” Buckley said. “And not only just do that for competitiveness, but it gives a different idea of how baseball is played in a different part of the country — not that it’s a huge deal, but I think it helps from an [NCAA] committee standpoint.”
One stretch of the schedule that Buckley pointed to as a test for the team is March 24-28 where the team plays five games in a row.
“The goal is you have to have the intentions to play a good schedule,” Buckley said. “Who knows if every team is going to be really solid at the end of the year, but on paper we have solid intentions that we’re trying to play a solid schedule at home and on the road.”
While the schedule will be tough at times, Buckley isn’t worried about his team’s experience due the return on several key players.
“We have really experienced position players we pretty much have everyone coming back,”