WASHINGTON – The Georgetown University baseball team has announced its schedule for the upcoming 2019 season. The Hoyas will play a challenging schedule with 26 home games at Shirley Povich Field and eight games against opponents that reached the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
 
"We feel we will be challenged early and often throughout our schedule in 2019," Georgetown Head Coach Pete Wilk said. "With early big games against Wake Forest and Stetson, we'll be playing some of the best teams in the country, and we're able to head south again early. It's also nice to have three nonconference home weekends against Princeton, Hartford and Rider, which will be nice to play in our own ballpark instead of being road warriors at that time of the year."
 
For the fifth time in the past six years, the Hoyas will open the season in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, playing at the Wake Forest Invitational. Georgetown will open up against Big Ten opponent Illinois on Friday, Feb. 15 before taking on Sacred Heart the following day. The Blue & Gray will close out the opening weekend against the host Demon Deacons on Sunday, Feb. 17.
 
Georgetown will head back down to the Tar Heel State the following weekend, Feb. 22-24, for a three-game series at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. The Camels won the Big South Championship in 2018, advancing to the NCAA Tournament in the Athens Regional, hosted by Georgia.
 
The Hoyas will open up their spring break trip with a round robin tournament at Stetson, March 1-3, in DeLand, Florida. They will start the trip with their second neutral-site game of the season against Sacred Heart on that Friday, before taking on the host Hatters on Saturday. Stetson was a No. 1 seed in last year's NCAA Tournament and advanced to the Super Regionals before falling to North Carolina. Georgetown will close out the weekend against St. Louis, which won the Atlantic 10 Championship last spring and advanced to the NCAA Tournament in the Oxford Regional, hosted by Ole Miss.
 
Following the weekend at Stetson, GU will head down to Port Charlotte, Florida for the Snowbird Baseball Classic for five games in six days to close out spring break. The Blue & Gray will play Mount St. Mary's (March 5) and Western Michigan (March 6) and, after an off day, wrap up the trip with matchups against Ball State (March 8), Kansas (March 9) and Saint Joseph's (March 10).
 
Georgetown will host its first home series when it welcomes Princeton to Shirley Povich Field for a four-game series the weekend of March 15-17. The two teams will play a single game on Friday and Sunday, sandwiched around a doubleheader on Saturday. The Hoyas will remain home the following weekend, March 22-24, to host Hartford in a three-game set.
 
The squad will close out March with a trip to East Tennessee State (March 29-31). The Hoyas will play their final nonconference series of the season during their BIG EAST bye week, hosting Rider at Shirley Povich Field on Easter weekend, April 19-20. The teams will play a single game on Friday and a doubleheader on Saturday.
 
BIG EAST Conference play will feature home series against St. John's (April 26-28), Creighton (May 3-5) and Butler (May 16-18). The Hoyas will travel to Xavier (April 5-7), Villanova (April 12-14) and Seton Hall (May 10-11). The three-game series against the Pirates will be played over two days.
 
Georgetown will play home-and-home weekday series against a number of local opponents. The Blue & Gray will match up against George Washington (Feb. 27, April 24), Coppin State (March 13, April 10), George Mason (March 19, April 3), Navy (March 27, April 16) and UMBC (May 1, May 14). The Hoyas will also host Maryland Eastern Shore for a doubleheader on May 8.
 
Georgetown is coming off a 2018 season that saw it finish with an overall record of 25-30, going 25-20 after dropping the first 10 games of the year to earn the program's fourth-consecutive season 25-win season and the fifth in the past six years. The Hoyas went 8-9 in BIG EAST play, qualifying for their first conference tournament since 2015 and just the second since 1986.