Dartmouth releases 2020 schedule

HANOVER  — Dartmouth baseball head coach Bob Whalen announced the team’s spring schedule today, featuring two trips to Florida as well as a three-game series at ACC power Virginia prior to the 21-game Ivy League slate begins in late March.

The season will open at the Snowbird Classic in Port Charlotte, Fla., with single games against three teams from the Midwest — Indiana State, Chicago State and Omaha — on Feb. 21-23. The following weekend, the Big Green will get an opportunity to take on Virginia, which has played in the NCAA Tournament in eight of the last 10 years with a national title to its credit in 2015.

Following winter finals, Dartmouth will trek back to Florida for the RussMatt Invitational, playing Hofstra three times and Bradley once in Kissimmee on March 14-17. Before returning to the Northeast, the Green will get one final game in down South at Bethune-Cookman.

The first Ivy League opponent will be Penn in Philadelphia on March 21-22 for the usual doubleheader on Saturday and finale on Sunday. Dartmouth will also play road series at defending champion Harvard (March 28-29), Yale (April 11-12) and Cornell (May 2-3), plus non-conference contests at UMass Lowell (April 7) and Boston College (April 15).

The Big Green will get to play in front of a home crowd at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park for the first time on March 25 — their earliest home date ever — with Quinnipiac in town. Other non-conference foes to play in Hanover will be Holy Cross (April 1) and Siena (April 22), with Ivy League series against Princeton (April 4-5), Brown (April 18-19) and Columbia (April 25-26).

The top two teams at the end of the regular season will meet in the best-of-three Ivy League Championship Series on May 16-17 at the site of the team that sits atop the standings. Dartmouth is aiming to return to the ILCS for the first time since its eighth straight trip to the event in 2015.

Dartmouth is coming off a 15-26 campaign last year with an 8-13 record in the Ivy League, ending a streak of 11 straight seasons above .500 against conference competition, which matched a school record.