COLUMBIA, Mo. - Mizzou Softball has announced its 2015 schedule, and Head Coach Ehren Earleywine's team will face top teams at University Field and around the country yet again. Mizzou will match up against 17 NCAA Tournament teams from the 2014 season, including eight different three-game series against Southeastern Conference foes that qualified for the tournament last year.
Earleywine's squad is coming off another impressive season in 2014, as the Tigers compiled a 43-18 overall record, with a 15-9 mark in conference play (good for third in the league standings for a second-straight year). The campaign resulted in Missouri's eighth-straight NCAA Regional appearance. Mizzou finished the season ranked No. 18 and No. 19 in the ESPN.com/USA Softball Collegiate Top 25 poll and USA Today/NFCA Division I Top 25 polls, respectively.
Hopes are high again inside and outside of the program for 2015, as the Tigers return all but one every day position starter from 2014, including a vast majority of its offense from a year ago when MU ranked fifth in the SEC in hitting (.310 average) and second in the league in stolen bases (104). Over 75 percent of its position starts return from 2014, and the Tiger offense returns 82 percent of its production from a year ago in the hits and stolen bases categories. Also returning for another year in the circle is 2014 SEC Freshman of the Year Tori Finucane, a right-handed pitcher who went 21-6 in her first collegiate season, including a pair of wins on the road at eventual national champion Florida.
The Tigers will begin the 2015 season at the Dot Richardson Invitational in Clermont, Fla., from Feb. 13-15. Mizzou will kick off the invitational against Louisville, a participant in the 2014 NCAA Tournament. The following weekend, Missouri travels across the country to participate in the Mary Nutter Classic in Cathedral City, Calif., from Feb. 19-21. There, the Tigers will face off against four teams from the 2014 NCAA Tournament: Long Beach State, Texas, UCLA, and Arizona.
Mizzou then heads back to The Sunshine State the following week to participate in the Citrus Classic, hosted at the Disney/ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex for five more games. Following the Citrus Classic, Mizzou opens up its slate of conference games in Columbia, S.C., taking on South Carolina.
The Tigers will play seven more non-conference foes before continuing SEC play. From March 11-18, Mizzou will play SEMO, Fordham, Lipscomb, Binghamton, North Carolina State, Longwood, and Missouri State. Fordham and Lipscomb qualified for the NCAA Tournament in 2014.
The Tigers then jump into the bulk of their conference schedule, as they will play in seven different three-game series between the end of March and the first weekend of May. All of those series come against Southeastern Conference rivals that appeared in the 2014 NCAA Tournament.
Missouri will take on the Auburn Tigers, Mississippi State Bulldogs, Louisiana State Tigers, and the 2014 champion Florida Gators at University Field. The Tigers will travel to play the Tennessee Volunteers, Georgia Bulldogs, and Arkansas Razorbacks. In between those conference matchups, Mizzou will face off in two-game series against Illinois, Northern Iowa, Western Illinois, and Iowa.
Postseason play begins with the SEC Tournament from May 6-9 in Baton Rouge, La. NCAA Regionals are tentatively set for May 15-17, with NCAA Super Regionals falling between May 22-24. The NCAA Women's College World Series will take place in Oklahoma City from May 28-June 3.
Nine of Mizzou's games are slated for live broadcasts on the SEC Network. Included in that mix is the entire three-game series which opens league play for Mizzou at South Carolina (March 7-9), as well as two games from a home series against Auburn (March 28-29) and a single game each in home series against Mississippi State (April 12), LSU (April 27) and Florida (May 2).
For ticket information, Tiger fans are encouraged to contact the Mizzou Ticket Office at 1-800-CAT-PAWS (884-PAWS locally).
Fans are encouraged to check MUTigers.com and the softball team's social media outlets, @MizzouSoftball and Facebook, for updates and additional information.