Quotes: 2016 Baseball Schedule

2016 Oklahoma Sooners Baseball

Schedule Breakdown
Home	25
Road	26
Neutral	4
vs. RPI Top-50	12
vs. NCAA Participants	19
vs. CWS Participants	3

Opening Day: February 19, 2016
Oklahoma vs. Northeastern L. Dale Mitchell Park \| Norman Brockton-native Pete Hughes welcomes Boston's Northeastern University on opening weekend. Hughes and pitching coach Jamie Pinzino each spent stints as assistant coaches for the Huskies in their career.

Bulldogs and Dodger Dogs
Oklahoma vs. Mississippi State Dodger Stadium \| Los Angeles Oklahoma caps off a weekend of top-tier competition in Los Angeles against Mississippi State on March 6. The Sooners and Bulldogs face-off at Dodger Stadium; home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Pete Hughes, Head Coach

On his intentions when building the schedule:

Our schedule is driven by the RPI. To move on and play games deep into June, we've geared our schedule to take advantage of the value of road wins, relative to the RPI, while also recognizing that it's on us to win more of those critical games. I think this schedule improves our chances of taking that next step and reaching the postseason.

On the Sooners' strength of schedule:

Last year, I thought we put together one of the hardest schedules that has been at Oklahoma in the last decade; looking back at things. We played 10 games in 10 days to start the season, went on the road to Hawai'i. I thought our schedule was inline and it was done with a purpose; not to get as many wins as you can, but we scheduled, ironically, to get a high RPI and go to the national tournament. Not in anyway, can you look at that schedule last year and say it was soft. Either way, hard schedule, soft schedule, on the road, home, bottom line is you have to win.

On the importance of road games:

I think we put ourselves in a challenging, but in the best, situation by getting out on the road and giving us an opportunity to win on the road. That's where you can maximize the most is to win on the road so we're going to challenge our guys.

On home series that highlight the schedule:

We start the season off with a quality New England opponent that plays in a very good baseball conference in Northeastern University. Long Beach State, a perennial power, comes to Norman, which should be exciting for our fans to see.

Anytime we can play Texas at home, we feel like our kids play great in the environment. We can feed off of it and Texas will bring that type of atmosphere to Norman.

On scheduling to prepare for Big 12 play:

We usually schedule hard at the beginning of the year and challenge our guys to getting used to playing high-quality opponents and get good at playing on the road. That's how we scheduled to prepare for the Big 12.

UCLA, USC, Mississippi State – that's going to get us Big 12-ready. I've done everything to challenge our guys before we get to the Big 12 and I did that because I believe in our players and to get the Big 12-tough.

On playing a game a Dodger Stadium:

Those are the opportunities you have when you play baseball at the University of Oklahoma. You get to play against the top teams in the country in the top venues in the country. We try to expose our players to all of those things, keeping in mind our overall goal, which is to get our team playing in the best and the most competitive environments so that we can be great at the end of the year and play in Omaha.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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