An in-depth look at UConn baseball's 2024 schedule
Dealing with a weak 21-game conference slate makes putting a schedule together a difficult task.
UConn announced its spring athletic schedules on Monday, including the baseball program’s current 53-game slate. The Huskies can add up to three contests and will likely do so, with March 29-31 sitting empty.
Jim Penders has an unenviable task. The 21-game Big East schedule is a drag on RPI and strength of schedule, making up nearly half of the games available to his team to make an impression on the committee. In 2023, Xavier was the only Quad 1 opponent, while Butler and Villanova were both sub-200 in the RPI. The Huskies’ non-conference strength of schedule, which includes Big East Tournament games, was No. 51 in the country, compared to No. 77 when league games were included.
This means UConn needs to find strong games each year and must travel to do so, as home baseball is untenable for the first month of the season, threading the needle between winnable games and contests that will keep RPI high into May. This is ultimately a guessing game, but it seems as though Penders did a good job, even if Opening Day is more than 100 days away.
An overview
If there was a word for the schedule, it’s strong. The average 2023 final RPI of the 32 non-conference games presently scheduled is 89.7, with 21 top-100 games. Of the eight Quad 4 contests, just one (LIU) is sub-200, and even that one comes with a story. The Sharks were willing to cancel last year’s date, which was on May 9 and was going to take place with the program sitting at No. 281 in the RPI, as the Huskies were trying to hold onto a Regional hosting spot. LIU was repaid with another game, this one in March, and the only way it doesn’t get played is if weather is a factor.
Indiana State, which was No. 9 in the final RPI, is one of two Regional hosts from 2023 on the docket. Auburn (No. 29) is the other. That pair, along with Boston College, CCSU and Northeastern, were in the 2023 NCAA Tournament field and went a combined 5-10, as Indiana State moved to the Fort Worth Super Regional.
Strong Spring Break trip
One of the best ways to secure top opponents is Spring Break. UConn will often set up shop in either Florida, the Carolinas or California and play eight games on the road. This is often where some of the non-conference highlights come on the schedule, as many ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC schools limit their exposure to strong non-conference weekend play because of the strength of their leagues, but will play in the midweek.
Programs in conferences with similar footprints, that often play power schools in the midweek, will have high RPIs as well, which are often the target for weekend series. This year, SoCal is the location, coming for the second time in three years. UC Santa Barbara (No. 56) is the first series, with another three against Cal Baptist (No. 169) to end the trip. UCLA (No. 66) and UC Irvine (No. 46) will represent the midweek battles.
While there’s just one Quad 1 game, there’s a high floor for these programs. UCLA was seventh in the Pac-12, a league that had 10 of its 11 teams in the top 100. The Big West, of which UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara are members, is a solid baseball conference that always contends for multiple bids and the Anteaters and Gauchos are consistently a part of that fight.
Big non-conference weekends
There aren’t any RPI killers in the non-conference, which isn’t always the case and will help if the Huskies can rack up the wins. The season opens with the USF Invitational, featuring the Bulls (No. 160), the only Quad 4 game on a weekend aside from Cal Baptist), Indiana State and Louisville.
Weekend 1 features a pair of Quad 1 neutral battles. In particular, Louisville, which has appeared consistently on the docket since departing the then-Big East for the ACC, has a high floor and is a mainstay in the NCAA Tournament. Meanwhile, Indiana State was one of the best stories of 2023 and would have hosted a Super Regional if not for a prior commitment to host a Special Olympics event.
California awaits the following week. The Golden Bears have made the NCAA Tournament once since 2015, but are members of the Pac-12, which creates a certain floor. Even at eighth in the 11-team league, they were still a top-100 program in 2023. Even if the Huskies lose the series, it’s still not going to be a drain on the RPI.
The unquestionable highlight is the next weekend’s trip to Auburn. The Tigers are a consistent SEC contender, finished No. 29 in the RPI last year and went to the 2022 College World Series. Only two SEC programs, which combined to win a quarter of their league games, were outside Quad 1. The Huskies haven’t played an SEC school in a weekend series since Florida in 2014.
Rutgers wraps up the non-conference weekend slate. A former Big East foe, the Scarlet Knights are hosting the Huskies to finish a home-and-home series that started last season. The Big Ten has been improving in baseball in recent years and they’re part of that, with a top-75 finish last year, but they haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2007.
Smart midweek scheduling
On at least one occasion in recent years, midweek scheduling has cost UConn an NCAA Tournament bid. Penders has improved at scheduling these games, focusing on minimizing exposure to big RPI drops with a loss in a game that tests depth much more than top talent.
Boston College and Northeastern have proved themselves to be reliable as far as RPI rankings and UConn has focused on scheduling home-and-homes with both, a trend that continues into this year, as both made the NCAA Tournament last year and the Eagles were one of the last teams left out of the hosting discussion.
UConn was one of the first schools to release its non-conference schedule, so it’s unclear why Kansas State will be in the Northeast in mid-April, but ensuring the Wildcats made a stop in Storrs along the way is a great move. They finished just outside the top 50 in 2023 and as Big 12 members, won’t be an RPI anchor. Similarly, the Huskies’ final road series in against Butler. They’re going to stop off in Cincinnati and play the Bearcats on the way, rather than staying east.
There are only two Quad 4 games on the schedule and both aren’t without explanation. Rhode Island is one of UConn’s most frequent opponents in history, and Penders has a close relationship with Rhode Island head coach Raphael Cerrato and pitching coach David Fischer is a UConn alumnus.
Advantageous Big East sequencing
The league slate is set in the Big East offices, but they did UConn some favors that put it in great position to claim another regular season title. In even years, the Huskies get both Creighton and Xaiver, the two primary challengers to their supremacy at the top of the standings, at Elliot Ballpark and they’re at opposite ends of the schedule.
The Musketeers will open Big East play for UConn, arriving in early April, while the Bluejays don’t come for another month. The 21-game Big East docket isn’t the biggest slog in college baseball, but those two programs coming to town away from each other can help the program best prep for success.
Overall, this is a really great schedule. There are plenty of winnable games and few RPI anchors to be found. The most important part is the quality of the weekend series in the non-conference. There’s a Quad 1 series, three Quad 2 series and a Quad 4 series, with single games against two Quad 1 and one Quad 4 team to start the year.
Penders melds this with only one sub-200 midweek game and this is about as good as can be reasonably expected from a UConn baseball schedule, even with three games still to be scheduled. Provided that series comes against the top half of Division I, there won’t be much, if any fat in 2024. With another strong regular season, these strength of schedule numbers have the chance to back up a potential hosting bid.