Boston College baseball starts up in a week, when the Eagles travel to South Carolina to take on Coastal Carolina in the Caravelle Resort Tournament down in Myrtle Beach. BC will play its first 19 games on the road this year because, well, it's utterly ridiculous to play baseball in New England in mid-February.
It will likely be a long, long road trip for an Eagles team that loses two of its better hitters Robbie Anston (.314 average) and Mickey Wiswall (.301 average), and weekend ace Pat Dean (5-2, 4.75 ERA, 77.2 innings pitched).
On their opening 19-game road trip, the Eagles will face the no. 1 Florida Gators down in Gainesville for three games, no. 20 ranked Coastal Carolina and open conference play at no. 11 Florida State. The Eagles will also face the Red Sox down in Fort Myers for their annual exhibition game beat down.
BC will be in South Carolina and Florida for the nearly a month before returning to New England to take on Bryant in Smithfield, R.I. on March 16. Then, it's back down to College Park for a weekend series against the Terps, followed by a weekday game at Holy Cross the following week. FINALLY, 19 games and one exhibition game later, and more than a month into the season, BC opens at home as they host Virginia Tech.
I realize BC is a cold-weather college baseball program but a 20-game road trip to start the season seems a bit excessive, no? I guess such is the life of a northern school playing college baseball. They are planning on building a Dome on Brighton Campus for the baseball and softball teams, right?