More marquee tests for the Hoosiers in second year of expanded conference play
By Carl James @jovian34 December 22nd, 2025
The Indiana University Baseball program announced the remainder of its full 2026 slate today. The Big Ten (B1G) Conference slate was known back in June. The 25 non-conference games schedule includes single games against two 2025 College World Series opponents including defending national champion LSU. In total the Hoosiers will play 9 games against teams that finished in the D1Baseball top-25 in 2025.
4 Non-con weekends
With 10 conference weekends, head coach Jeff Mercer had to fill out four non-conference weekends. The conference bye weekend is April 17th-19th and the Hoosiers will again play a series with Abilene Christian, but the 2026 series will be at Bart Kaufman Field in Bloomington.
The opening weekend may be the most challenging of the season. The Hoosiers will travel to Chapel Hill for a series with ACC powerhouse North Carolina. The Tar Heels are coming off a home Super Regional loss to Arizona and are on most expert lists to make a run at the national title. They are very deep on the mound. The season opens on Friday February 13th.
Week two also puts the Hoosiers on the national stage in a round-robin event in Jacksonville, Florida, that includes defending national champion LSU, Central Florida, and in-state ACC foe Notre Dame. The LSU game being on Friday makes this a genuine early test and chance to make a statement for the NCAA resume.
Except for a fall ball exhibition a while back, this will be the first time a Jeff Mercer lead Hoosier team will face the Fightin’ Irish. The two were slated to play at Victory Field in April of 2020 before the pandemic wiped out the season, and the teams never agreed on another game. While it’s disappointing that the programs can’t work out a game in that state of Indiana, at least it’s happening somewhere. The last official game in the series was the famous “Christmas color rush” game at Victory Field in April 2018.
The third weekend, the Hoosiers will travel to Bowling Green for a 4-game series with Western Kentucky who is coming off a 43-win season. To get the four games in over the weekend the teams will play a Saturday double-header. Of note: new pitching coach Matt Myers was head coach of Western Kentucky from 2012-2015 and Jeff Mercer spent some time on that coaching staff as well.
Midweeks
The midweek slate has some more challenges compared to 2025. Coach Mercer’s former team, the always tough Wright State will return to the Bart on March 10th where they won a midweek in 2019. The Hoosiers will travel to Nashville to take on SEC powerhouse Vanderbilt on March 17th. The annual midweek vs. Louisville shifts to the Kentucky side of the Ohio River on April 28th. This will give Indiana 7 total games against the top two conferences in the country.
Northern Kentucky and Bradley will come the Bart for early season midweek tune-ups in 2026. The Hoosiers will have home-and-homes with Missouri Valley competition Indiana State and Evansville, plus top MAC program Ball State
Strength of Schedule
I’ve gone through my typical exercise of using last year’s results with the coming year’s schedule to get a ballpark on strength of schedule. By the metrics this is one of the best I have seen doing this. 2026 IU opponents combined for 0.5804 win percentage in 2025. There are only three games (of 55) with sub 20-win teams (Bradley and Evansville) which is a big driver of keeping a strong schedule metric.
In the age of the transfer portal, prior year has not been as good a predictor as in year’s past. Last year I assumed correctly that USC and UCLA would not be the boat anchors they were in 2024. This year we may need to adjust down as almost all of these non-con teams had stellar years. I would struggle to count on Western Kentucky to be a consistent 40-win team, and they account for 4 games.
My math says that a 33-22 record should get the Hoosiers’ resume on the table RPI wise. To be in the hosting conversation that will likely require about 40 wins before the B1G Tournament. When it comes to actual selection/seeding, which games they win will also come into play. It will be important to win several of those games against ACC/SEC competition to show strength on a national level.