What is the story about?
It’s
mid-October, which means it’s time to start looking towards the 2026 baseball season! Wait, what?
NC State released their 2026 schedule on Friday afternoon. Here are some quick thoughts:
- NC State will open the season February 13-15 in the Puerto Rico Challenge, squaring off with Washington, Indiana State, and Seton Hall. Fellow ACC teams Wake Forest and Boston College will also take part, but State will not face off with them there.
- Speaking of Wake Forest, the Wolfpack and Demon Deacons faced each other a week ago in a fall scrimmage with State taking an 11-5 win. You can watch that here.
- The Pack don’t play a single non-conference away series. The first true away game is March 17th at UNCW.
- Here are State’s non-conference opponents by 2025 RPI rank:
- #78 Washington
- #162 Indiana State
- #176 Seton Hall
- #180 Winthrop
- #270 Princeton (weekend series)
- #140 Richmond
- #264 Akron
- #186 Sacred Heard (weekend series)
- #2 Coastal Carolina
- #265 Queens
- #253 Lafayette
- #213 Elon
- #76 UNCW (two mid-week games)
- #128 Campbell
- #96 Liberty
- #55 East Carolina (two mid-week games)
- #252 NC A&T
- The series against Princeton and Sacred Heart are lacking, to be honest.
- Sacred Heart lost a bunch of their lineup, including three of their top five hitters from a year ago, as well as their top two starting pitchers. The Pioneers didn’t add much by way of the transfer portal, either, so expecting them to even match their RPI from 2025 is asking too much, let alone improve upon it.
- Princeton is on the other end, returning a lot from both their lineup and pitching staff, but that’s from a team that was really bad. They should improve, but will still be a team ranked in the 200’s in RPI that struggles to play .500 ball in Ivy League play.
- ACC play opens at home against Boston College (28-27, 10-20 ACC, #54 RPI in 2025) but then gets really hard with road trips to Florida State (42-16, 17-10, #11) and Georgia Tech (41-19, 19-11, #19) the next two weekends.
- BC should be roughly on par with what they were a year ago, but FSU should be every bit as strong. GT will be under the direction of a first-year, first-time head coach in James Ramsey, but will still be an NCAA Regional caliber squad.
- The next two weekends feature home series against Notre Dame (32-21, 14-16, #48) and Duke (41-21, 17-13, #32) followed by two road series at Wake Forest (39-22, 16-14, #29) and Virginia Tech (31-25, 12-18, #56).
- Notre Dame will be improved and Wake should be strong again. Like GT, Duke will be under a first-year, first-time head coach in Corey Muscara who comes over from Wake. Losing Muscara will hurt Wake, but they’ll still be solid. VT will be a tough assignment as always under John Szefc.
- A home series against Miami (35-27, 15-14, #34) and a road series at Stanford (27-25, 11-19, #52) set up the regular season finale series at home against North Carolina (46-15, 18-11, #9) before ACC Tournament play begins in Charlotte.
- Miami will be interesting to watch in the third year under J.D. Arteaga who was on path to get fired midway through last year before putting together a strong run, then fading, and finally finishing in a Super Regional. Who knows what to expect from Stanford, who still has a really good coach and brings in a Top 20 freshman class, but didn’t do much in the transfer portal. Begrudgingly, UNC should again be very strong, if for nothing else thanks to their pitching staff.
- The ACC will again be a strong league and that will boost the RPI, as will late season midweek games against UNCW, Campbell, Liberty, and ECU. It’s the middle season run of non-conference games – Coastal notwithstanding – that will keep the Pack’s RPI down.
- This State team has the talent to be an NCAA Regional host, but the resume is important. I still don’t get why scheduling is this difficult.
- We still can’t get a home-road-neutral weekend series worked out with ECU? Why is this so difficult? The Pirates have worked this out over the last few years with UNC, so clearly they’re willing. It’s a matchup that sells more tickets than any other. Why are we not interested?
- Aside from those already on the schedule, other drivable opponents (less than 5 hours) that should have been considered in lieu of the six opponents on the 2026 schedule who ranked in the 200’s in RPI last season:
- East Tennessee State (2025 RPI #45)
- Charlotte (#67)
- South Carolina (#75)
- USC Upstate (#91)
- High Point (#94)
- Charleston (#99)
- The Citadel (#101)
- George Mason (#106)
- Old Dominion (#110)
- Wofford (#118)
- Western Carolina (#119)
- Charleston Southern (#136)
- UNCG (#153)
- It’s completely understood in this day and age of college athletics that the results of a previous season are minimally impactful to the results of the following season, but it’s still a fairly decent indicator of program health. It would have been nice to see weekend series against one of the above listed teams or against ECU, Coastal, Richmond, Liberty, or Campbell.
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