The College Dugout

By: Brainstormball

It’s not often teams outside of the Northeast travel to the Northeast. It’s not often Power 5 teams make the trip to the Northeast. As a matter of fact, the only time a Power 5 school comes to New England is when BC plays a home ACC series.

Our region sees some high quality programs come to the area year in and year out for conference series. This spring, New England programs will get to host some intriguing schools.
-BC is hosting Virginia Tech (March 22-24), Florida State (April 5-7), Wake Forest (April 12-14), Virginia (April 25-27), and Louisville (May 2-4).
-Northeastern is hosting UNC Wilmington (April 19-21) and Elon (April 26-28)
-UConn is hosting Xavier (April 5-7) and Creighton (May 10-12)
-UMass is hosting Saint Louis (May 16-18)
-URI is hosting Richmond (May 10-12)

This year, Kansas State is making an appearance in New England – which may change the future of our region.

Kansas State will be coming up midweek to play UConn (April 16) and Northeastern (April 17). You may be asking – why is one game so important?

First, we can go years back to the last non-conference Power 5 team to come to New England – 2010 when UConn hosted Oregon in a regional. 2010 was also the last time a regional was in New England when UConn hosted the Norwich Regional (UConn, Florida State, Oregon & Central Connecticut).

Next, strength of schedule is even more important nowadays than it ever has been. Kansas State always plays a competitive Big 12 schedule and great non-conference schedule which adds value to UConn and Northeastern. The Big 12 is consistently one of the top 4 conferences in the country, last year ranking 3rd behind the SEC and ACC in terms of RPI. You can see the Conference RPIs here.

To add, Kansas State is going to be really really good this year. They will be a tournament team and for both UConn and Northeastern, it will be an additional game against a team with an RPI in the Top 50. They could easily play another New England program, but to have one additional game, at home, against a Top 50 RPI team is huge.

Last, Kansas State has started a pipeline with New England players. Head Coach, Pete Hughes, is a New England guy. He went to BC High, was an assistant coach at Hamilton College and Northeastern, and head coach at Trinity (TX), Boston College, Virginia Tech, and Oklahoma, all prior to Kansas State. Current players on the roster from New England that will have a homecoming include Danniel Rivera (New Britain HS, CT/Southern New Hampshire), Brady Day (Pinkerton Academy, NH), and Matt Lee (Taconic HS, MA). Former Wildcats from New England that played under Hughes at Kansas State were Jared Henry (Monument Mountain HS, MA/UMass/Southern Connecticut), Luke Beckstein (Groton School, MA/currently at Northeastern), and Chad Shade (Pittsfield HS, MA/Springfield College).

In addition to UConn and Northeastern, Kansas State is also scheduled to play a few other New England programs this spring. This past weekend they played BC in the MLB Desert Invitational. This weekend, Holy Cross heads to Manhattan for a 3-game set and UMass-Lowell heads there next weekend for a 3-game set. In total, they will play 9 games, almost 20% of their regular season schedule against New England programs.

I hope it’s a very successful trip for Kansas State. Playing two of New England’s best is a good start to getting more teams up to our area. Imagine an SEC school coming up to New England for a regular season game?

Overall, Kansas State is helping all of New England by coming up and I can’t wait to see the trend they start.