K-State will keep playing hard schedules until it’s a ‘national baseball program’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Hughes schedules tough nonconference games to boost K‑State’s RPI
- Aggressive scheduling helped K‑State reach back‑to‑back NCAA Tournament berths
- Coach schedules tough road games now to build credibility as a national program
The Kansas State baseball team will hit the road to play some of its most challenging games on weekdays this season.
K-State is scheduled to play a road series against Louisiana later this month. In March, the Wildcats will play a pair of rare games at Baylor and at BYU that won’t count in the Big 12 standings. They will also play at Grand Canyon in April.
Those games are in addition to regional contests that will be played on Tuesdays against Nebraska and Wichita State.
Some may wonder if K-State baseball coach Pete Hughes has constructed an overly challenging schedule for his team, but he insists there is a method to his madness.
“I’m constantly trying to build our RPI,” Hughes said earlier this week. “You do that through non-conference opportunities. We are in this part of the country, we don’t have great RPI opportunities in Kansas for non-conference games. So you have to be a little creative with the scheduling.”
An aggressive schedule has helped K-State reach the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons.
Two years ago, the Bat Cats won 35 games and reached a Super Regional. Last year, they won 32 games and bowed out in a Regional.
Hughes is confident that K-State will contend for another Regional trip this season. He likes his mixture of returning players, such as Dee Kennedy, Bear Madliak and James Guyette, and talented newcomers.
But the Wildcats haven’t received much preseason love from college baseball experts.
“They’re still not ready,” Hughes said, “to say Kansas State is a national baseball program.”
Until that changes, Hughes will continue to schedule aggressively.
“Do we have a chip on our shoulder? Absolutely,” Hughes said. “We’re Kansas State baseball. We’re a bubble team before the season starts, and somehow they’re going to put us on that bubble no matter what our body of work is. That’s just who we are right now. It doesn’t slow us down, it motivates us.”
K-State will begin its season against Iowa on Feb. 13 in Goodyear, Arizona as part of the MLB Desert Invitational. The Wildcats will also play three games in Arlington, Texas as part of the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series.
Then comes a pair of games at Louisiana before K-State plays its home opener on Feb. 27 at Tointon Family Stadium.
In time, Hughes would love to play more games in Manhattan. The hope is that playing difficult road games now will make that more of a possibility later.
“It’s always a difficult situation for me scheduling, because you want more home games,” Hughes said. “You want to promote your sport, you want to promote it to the community and you want to play in front of a great community.
“We’re outstanding at home. So everything tells me we need to play more home games. We can produce more revenue. But, at the end of day, we’re hired to get in the national tournament.”