The first 11-week/30-game B1G season includes series against new league opponents UCLA and USC
By Carl James @jovian34 December 9th, 2024
Edits (12/9 4:24pm ET): The weekend at Stetson will feature Mount St. Mary’s of Maryland, not St. Mary’s of California. I clarified the order of play in the three-team set February 28th to March 2nd with Stetson and adjusted the win expectation for post-season up by one game in each SOS/RPI projection.
Indiana Baseball released their full 2025 schedule on Monday. It is a full 56 game slate which includes just 23 games set to be played at Bart Kaufman Field. The Big Ten conference portion of the schedule is 10 series/30 game slate as the league brings in four programs out of the Pac 12 Conference: Washington, Oregon, UCLA, and USC.
Season starts
The Hoosiers will start the season in Surprise, Arizona on Valentine’s Day in a round-robin event with Xavier, Oregon State, and two games with UNLV. The Hoosiers will host Purdue Fort Wayne for the home opener on Tuesday February 19th. The Mastodons stunned Indiana in a midweek this past March. The second weekend of the season is a round-robin event at the USA Baseball complex in Cary, NC. The Hoosiers will play Northwestern (not counting toward B1G standings), Fordham, and Harvard at the event.
On the last day of February, the Hoosiers will start a three-team event in Florida with a double header against host Stetson and Mount St. Mary’s. The Hoosiers will play Stetson again on March 1st and play Mount St. Mary’s again on March 2nd. The Hoosiers will then host Northern Kentucky in a Tuesday midweek.
Early Conference Play
With the addition of two weekends, the Big Ten will join a few other conferences, especially the ACC in starting conference play on March 7th. The Hoosiers get to travel to Happy Valley for a series against Penn State that weekend. We can hope for the best, but playing early March games in the North on natural turf seems like less-than-ideal conditions. I’m all in favor of the 11-week schedule, but how hard would it have been to limit the first two weeks to either turf fields or the two schools in California?
The Ohio State Buckeyes come the Bart in week 2 after Indiana travels to Terre Haute for midweek action against Indiana State. Evansville comes to the Bart on Tuesday March 18th and then the Hoosiers fly to Los Angeles to play UCLA in their first ever B1G series in California. The weakest 2024 team on the schedule, 10-win Bellarmine, comes to the Bart March 25th and the month concludes with a B1G home series against USC.
April
The annual Louisville midweek is earlier in 2025 with an April Fool’s Day match-up at the Bart. Michigan State then comes to town for a series, followed by Ball State for a Tuesday midweek. Hoosiers travel to Champaign to play reigning B1G champs Illinois in a series starting April 11th. The Sycamores make a return trip to the Bart on Tax Day Tuesday, and Maryland comes to the Bart for a series starting April 18th.
Thanks to weather last year, it’s now been three years since the Hoosiers have played at Victory Field. On Wednesday, April 23rd, Ball State and Indiana will try again to bring college baseball back to downtown Indianapolis. The Hoosiers will end of the month on the road with a weekend series at Iowa and then a Tuesday midweek at Evansville.
May
The only true non-conference three-game series of 2025 starts May 2nd when Indiana travels to Texas to take on Abilene Christian. ACU won 33 games in 2024 and is a big upgrade over a Butler as the bye-week opponent from a year ago. The first week of May is finals, so no midweek action. Indiana will host Purdue in a rivalry series on Graduation weekend which will conclude the home portion of the slate. The Purdue series will be the only action at Bart Kaufman Field (barring a regional host) after April 20th.
On May 13th the Hoosiers will travel to Cincinnati out of the Big 12, who outplayed IU in fall ball at the Bart. In a repeat of last year, the regular season will end with the Hoosiers taking on former Indiana skipper Tracy Smith’s Michigan Wolverines in a Thursday to Saturday series, this time in Ann Arbor.
Schedule Strength
Using the NCAA Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) tool, I ran a comparison of the 2025 schedule compared to the 2024 RPI results. I used 2024 records for both. In the past (with some exception) this is a good approximation. While teams will change year over year, there are enough different teams on a baseball schedule that the fluctuations tend to wash out.
For example, while Indiana State (with the loss of their head coach and a lot of transfer turnover) is likely to regress a bit this season, 19-win UCLA will likely improve in 2025. That being said, the change to a 30-game B1G slate may present a different kind of change between the years that I can’t account for as of yet. UCLA and USC in particular will be playing a much different schedule in 2025 vs. 2024.
The analysis shows that the 2025 schedule projects to be in-line with how 2024 turned out. Interestingly enough, I had predicted a year ago that the 2024 schedule was weak, but almost every team on the schedule improved year over year. Indiana was among the last four into the NCAA Tournament in 2024 with only 30 regular season wins (plus two more in Omaha). This low win total worked for IU due to Hoosier opponents combining for a really great 0.549 winning percentage and because of several high-profile wins on the resume.
I project Indiana will need 36 regular season wins to get into the solid at-large range and 37 total wins (including the B1G Tournament) to solidify an NCAA Berth on RPI alone. The opponent winning percentage in the model is 0.536. If the Hoosiers are looking to host a regional, 42 regular season wins will likely be needed. How they get to these win totals has proven to be important. Getting marquee wins helps the KPI metric which is now consulted by the NCAA Committee as part of the selection criteria. As weird as it sounds, in 2024 a win against a ranked Dallas Baptist team more than made up for a surprising midweek loss to Purdue Fort Wayne.
The B1G is fascinating in 2025. Based on 2024 metrics the Hoosiers get the worst RPI team in the league: UCLA; and miss the two teams getting national buzz in the league: Nebraska and Oregon. 60% of IU’s B1G slate matches up with Nebraska. Furthermore, Nebraska and Oregon miss each other. Indiana also misses Rutgers, Northwestern (in conference), Minnesota, and Washington.
The Good
I for one very much like the fact that the non-conference schedule is spread out with game against more different teams. 26 non-conference games with 17 different teams. It is more likely that the strength of schedule will be predictable and stable with more diversity among the non-conference teams. One or two of these teams having a bad season won’t significantly damage IU’s strength of schedule.
A 30-game B1G season will provide similar benefits. B1G opponent performance will be relatively stable. Even if a team has a lot of losses, they will mostly come against teams IU plays, so some of the RPI damage will get recovered by helping other B1G team’s records and the opponents’ opponents’ (yes… I typed that twice intentionally) winning percentage (25% of the RPI).
What’s Missing
Indiana will not face a team out of the elite Southeastern Conference (SEC) during the regular season for the first time since 2007. Like in 2024 with Iowa, IU will not face either the likely pre-season B1G title pick for 2025: Nebraska or Oregon. From an RPI standpoint, the breakdown of 23 home, 23 road, and 10 neutral is an improvement over years past.
The Ugly
I struggled to find much to complain about with this schedule. Only five non-conference games are with teams winning less than 20 games in 2024. More importantly these are spread out against five different teams so it’s very possible a couple could have better seasons. The new B1G teams IU will play (USC and UCLA) had historically bad years in 2024, but they are historically great (national title winning) programs and are likely to turn things around. The B1G schedule is a tad more unbalanced playing 58.8% of the league vs. 61.5% in recent years. That being said, I think playing 25% more teams and games more than makes up for that with a larger sample size and larger diversity of competition.
The downside of only 23 home games is that Indiana traditionally (though not in 2024) is dominant at home. Fans obviously want to be able to see the Hoosiers play at home. After April 20th, only the Purdue series is scheduled be in Bloomington, putting less play in the warmer part of the season at the Bart.