Baseball | 2/7/2019 11:24:00 AM

ROCHESTER, NY – Head coach Rob Grow is pleased to announce the 2019 RIT baseball schedule. The Tigers are scheduled to play 40 regular season games, including 14 at Tiger Stadium.
 
The Tigers are scheduled to play 24 games against Liberty League foes and 16 contests out of conference, including six at the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational in Florida for spring break.
 
RIT will open the season on March 1-3 with three games down in Hampden Sydney, Va., two versus Frostburg State University and one against St. Mary's College of Maryland. From there, RIT will make its annual trek to Lakeland and Winter Haven, Fla. for six contests at the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational over Spring Break, March 9-15.
 
The Tigers will open Liberty League play upon returning to campus, taking on Genesee River rival University of Rochester for four games on March 23-24. RIT will open its home schedule on March 24.
 
RIT will also play home non-conference contests against Utica College (doubleheader, March 30), St. John Fisher (April 10) and The College at Brockport (doubleheader, April 24), while traveling for single games at Utica (March 31), Hamilton College (April 17) and Brockport (April 30).
 
"We are excited to get going first in Virginia and then Florida for spring break," said Grow, who enters his 27th season at the university and is just 19 victories shy of 500 in his career. "We play a good mix of schools and will be tested right away. It will be great to get guys into the lineup and gain valuable experience before we head north. As always, St. John Fisher and Brockport are two of the top teams in our region and we take on a few teams we have not played in a while, Utica and Hamilton."
 
In conference play, RIT will host weekend four-game sets against Union College (April 6-7) and Vassar College (April 27-28) and head to Clarkson University (April 13-14), Skidmore College (April 19-20) and end the regular season against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (May 4-5). As part of the unbalanced league schedule, RIT will not play Bard and St. Lawrence, who finished seventh and ninth in the league standings last season.
 
The top five teams advance to the double elimination Liberty League Tournament, which will be held from May 9-11 at the highest seed. The fourth and fifth seeds will face off in an elimination game to kick off the tournament before the double elimination format begins. RIT won two games in the league tournament last season, coming up one game short of reaching the championship round.
 
"The Liberty League is consistently one of the top conferences in the Northeast," said Grow. "As we saw last year, the battle for playoff positioning went down to the final day. The difference between the top and bottom teams seems to be shrinking every season and we know each conference game will be tough."
 
RIT finished 20-17-1 overall in 2018 and is one season removed from its best year in program history, going 33-9 in 2017, while winning its first league championship and competing in its first NCAA Tournament.