Non-Conference Series<\/p>\n
Cal State Bakersfield will open the 2026 season at home for the third time in the last four seasons, benefiting from the mild winters while regularly welcoming teams from further east. This year\u2019s Opening Weekend slate, set for Feb. 13-16, will pit Bakersfield against Southern Indiana, a strong squad with an RPI south of 150 a year ago.<\/p>\n
The `Runners will then hit the road for the Kleberg Classic, a multi-team event hosted at Whataburger Field, a professional ballpark that is home to the Double-A affiliate of the Houston Astros. The first trip of the year to Texas will feature games against the tournament host Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, ACC power Pitt, and a non-conference clash with fellow Big West member Long Beach State.<\/p>\n
Just before conference play begins the `Runners will travel to Lubbock, Texas to face Texas Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s going to be a really different environment than our team will be used to. Big 12 games are a lot more offensive while almost all of the parks in the Big West are tough places to hit. We\u2019ll go and see some really high-end arms and it should be good for our guys to go out and play in a non-West Coast atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
During CSUB\u2019s bye week, the `Runners will get a preview of a future Big West foe when Utah Valley comes to town. Prior to the Wolverines joining the league next year, Banfield relishes the opportunity to go toe-to-toe: \u201cUtah Valley is going to bring a really different style when they join the Big West. They\u2019re playing at elevation and they are a strike you out and hit home runs kind of team, which is very different from the rest of our league.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Non-Conference Series Cal State Bakersfield will open the 2026 season at home for the third time in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-63969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}