Home team's website and gametracker both say 3:00 PM. Strange MGoBlue doesn't match.
Last week's news release from the Big Ten also says 3:00 Sunday.
If 3.30 start or later, I may head over to Bill Davis for the game. Will already be in UA for a football game. UM hasn't been down here for baseball for a long time. Anyone know why there's so much time between appearances?
There is so much time between appearances because there are too many teams in the conference.
There are 13 teams in the conference (Wisconsin's baseball team made the transition from irrelevant to non-existant about 25 years ago). There are 8 conference series a year. For whatever reason, the conference chose not to regionalize the baseball schedule, so they set up a 3-year rotation. In a 3-year period, a team hosts every other team once, plays at the other team once, and skips that team once.
Unless the teams choose to play each other non-conference, or to play a home & home series (like Michigan does with Michigan State), that means that each team makes exactly one visit every 3 years.
Michigan, for example, hosted Iowa, Maryland, Northwestern and Purdue in 2015, hosted Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Rutgers in 2016, and will host Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State and Penn State in 2017 (except one of the MSU games in 2016 was moved to East Lansing, and one of Michigan's games at MSU in 2017 will be played in Ann Arbor). I'm not sure if they are going to stick with the same schedule pattern after 2017, or if they will go to a regionalized schedule like softball did. I see advantages both ways.
With the "east/west" setup, Michigan will always play the weaker teams and rarely play the better teams to the west. Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern are perenially better than OSU, Penn State and the others that continually lag toward the bottom of the standings. As someone with season tickets, I enjoy a good old fashioned run-ruled blow out, but occasionally it would be good to see a competitive game against another upper echelon conference team. Seriously, Nebraska has been in the Big Ten now for five years and has yet to set foot on Alumni Field, yet Michigan has been there twice (three times if you count the 2013 Big Ten Tournament). Hopefully the Huskers come to Ann Arbor next year, but if the current scheduling stays in place, the two teams will not meet again for several years. The only positive is that this schedule helps Michigan continue its dynasty in conference play. To me, baseball definitely has it better.
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Yes, but when the Big Ten had 11 football teams back in the '90s, they still were able to accommodate a team's rivals--each school had 2 permanent opponents and the other 6 games rotated among the other 8 teams in the conference.
Baseball and softball could do that--preserve the local rivalries (like M-MSU and M-OSU) while keeping the rest of the schedule open for a rotation among the other teams.
A sample baseball schedule format:
* 2 series against permanent rivals
* 4 series against the 4 teams that were skipped last season
* 2 series tba based on record over (say) the last 5 years--the best teams in recent history will be guaranteed to play each other.
It still gives each team 8 series, and guarantees nobody is skipped in back-to-back seasons, plus it helps the better teams by giving them more difficult schedules (and ensures that the best teams play each other every season).
for colleges and play it from April 1 through July, WS in August. Play more games in better weather, better travel for opponents. Better everything really.
Kids?