McNeese State baseball coach Justin Hill has fulfilled a pair of goals with his 2015 schedule, which was released on Wednesday.

One of those goals was to create a challenging nonconference slate. With five NCAA tournament opponents and two super regional foes in the mix, that has been taken care of.

“I think that’s important because you get to test yourself week in and week out,” said the second-year head coach. “You’re always going to have a competitive game. We were able to get some quality home-and-homes midweek.”

His other was to give fans plenty of chances to catch the team at Cowboy Diamond. That will be accomplished with 36 home games, including single games against super regional teams Houston and Louisiana-Lafayette.

“One of our weekends was supposed to be on the road at UTSA, but we switched it with next year,” Hill said. “We’re a little home-heavy, which is a good thing. But the next year won’t be as balanced. With as many home games as we have, we want to take advantage.”

McNeese hosted an impromptu four-team tournament last season when wacky weather across the country brought Missouri and Southern Mississippi to Lake Charles for opening weekend along with Chicago State.

Hill said he would love to have a scheduled event in the future, but said making it an economic reality can be challenging.

“We really would like to do it, but the landscape of college baseball is so different than years back. A lot of teams are putting out lucrative home guarantees,” Hill said. “It probably costs about $15,000 to put on a tourney like that. To get that in the future we’ll have to try to get a sponsor. It will come down to paying some teams to get down here. It is attractive for cold-weather teams, but you’re talking about hotels and plane flights.”

McNeese opens with eight home games.

The Cowboys host Arkansas-Pine Bluff in a three-game set that starts on Feb. 13 before a midweek series against Louisiana Tech and another weekend series against Bradley.

The Cowboys’ first road trip will be at Louisiana-Lafayette on Feb. 24. McNeese’s annual trip to LSU will take place on March 11.

McNeese plays 30 conference games in the 13-member Southland. With Oral Roberts leaving the league, every SLC team will miss two opponents on a two-year basis. For the Cowboys, that will be Sam Houston State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in ’15 and ’16, though both are on the schedule for midweek games.

This necessitates a bye week for every league team during the conference schedule, which in McNeese’s case will be filled with a three-game series against Grambling State that closes out the home slate May 8-9.

McNeese closes the regular season at Central Arkansas on May 14-16. The SLC tournament will played at Constellation Field in Sugar Land, Texas, May 21-24.(Rick Hickman / American Press)

Rick Hickman