UNC baseball schedule release: How home games could be key this season

The World Series crown for the Boston Red Sox Sunday, officially marked the end of the major league baseball season. But one college team is already looking forward to next season.

The North Carolina baseball team released its 2019 schedule Monday, a competitive slate that includes 37 home contests at Boshamer Stadium out of 55 regular season games — a home field advantage comparable to two seasons ago. 

"Our players are very excited for this upcoming season," head coach Mike Fox said in a release. "It is another very challenging schedule for us. We play more home games in 2019 which we hope our fans will enjoy."

The road games will be few and far between for the Tar Heels. In addition to playing nearly 70 percent of its games in Chapel Hill, the team will play nine additional games that are a state away or closer to its home facilities. That means there will be only nine true regular season road games on the schedule that are a considerable distance to travel away from The Bosh. 

Starting with the first game on Feb. 15, the team will have a chance to get in a groove in its own facilities ahead of the first road games of the year. Before being eliminated by Oregon State in the College World Series, the Tar Heels ended 2018 on a 18-game home winning streak. 

They'll have a chance to nearly match that streak at the start of the season with 13 games in a row in Chapel Hill, including three weekend series against Xavier, South Florida and UMass Lowell. 

Once ACC play begins on March 8, so do the team's road games. UNC will play its first conference series at Clemson, a team it swept the last time the squads played in 2017. 

For the rest of the season, the Tar Heels will offset weekday non-conference games with weekend series against conference foes.The team will play a home series against Duke, N.C. State, Virginia, Miami and Boston College and will travel to Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh. 

UNC faced seven of those 10 conference foes last season — amassing an 18-6 record, including games in the ACC Championship, as part of a run to capture the ACC Coastal Division title for the second year in a row. 

"Our league will once again be very good as the ACC continues to be one of the nation's best baseball conferences," Fox, who signed a contract extension last season, said. "We look forward to another exciting season of Carolina baseball."

After its annual Charlotte contest against South Carolina at BB&T Stadium, UNC will play 14 of its last 17 games at home — giving it the comfort of its home facilities at the most crucial point in the season. 

That kind of advantage can only help — and could galvanize this season like it did for the team in 2018. Down the stretch, UNC won 15 of its last 21 games to take command of the conference and rise in the national rankings in the final stretch of the season.

If the Tar Heels can propel their way to the top during the regular season, the home field advantage will continue into the postseason. 

With the ACC Championship at Durham Bulls Athletic Park from May 21-26 and the possibility of hosting an NCAA Regional or Super Regional again, UNC could make it back to the College World Series for the second straight year without many games out of its comfort zone.  

 @_jackfrederick

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