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 Trish Paine batted .293 and stole 17 bases last season as a junior. (Photo by Wayne Tilcock, Davis Enterprise) |
Oct. 8, 2008
DAVIS, Calif. - The 2009 UC Davis softball schedule has been unveiled and the slate features a total of 54 regular season games. The breakdown includes 33 non-conference contests as well as a 21-game Big West Conference schedule. In all, the Aggies will play 17 games against teams that participated in last year's NCAA Tournament.
The schedule features plenty of tournament action in the first half of the season resulting in 31 of the team's first 34 games being on the road. The Aggies open their season Feb. 7-8 with four games at a tournament in Cathedral City, Calif. UC Davis will face Southern Illinois, Fordham, James Madison and Illinois in the two-day competition. The following week features the UNLV Desert Classic with match-ups against BYU, Oregon State, Hawaii and Utah.
After returning from the Desert Classic, UC Davis will host Nevada in its La Rue Field opener on Feb. 17. After a doubleheader at Saint Mary's, the Aggies return home to face Santa Clara on Feb. 25.
That sets the stage for another long stretch of road games, which is primarily made up of tournaments in San Diego as well as Stanford. In San Diego, the Aggies take on Utah, San Diego, Oregon and Colorado State. A doubleheader at Sacramento State is followed by the Stanford Louisville Slugger Classic where UC Davis faces San Diego State, Penn State, Stanford and Illinois State.
On March 11, the Aggies play their third home game (against San Jose State) before taking part in the National Invitation Softball Tournament (NIST) March 13-15. While in San Jose, UC Davis faces Sacramento State, UNLV, Vermont, Canisius and SJSU. The road stretch continues the following week with a game at Cal State Bakersfield on March 23 and a doubleheader at Fresno State the following day.
From that point, 21 of the team's final 23 games are against Big West foes. The Aggies will host four of their seven conference series. Those opponents include Pacific, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly and Cal State Northridge while Long Beach State, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara represent the Big West road series.
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Fourteen of the Aggies' final 18 games will be played at La Rue Field. Of those, 12 are Big West games with the other two against Pac-10 competition in the form of Oregon State and California.
In addition to the spring schedule, UC Davis will play four exhibitions as part of its fall schedule. The Aggies face San Jose State and Humboldt State on Oct. 11 as part of the 2008 Battle of the Bay in Hayward, Calif. On Oct. 23, the Aggies host Sacramento State in an exhibition at 3 p.m. at La Rue Field. The fall schedule concludes Oct. 26 at Cal.
