SPOKANE, Wash. — Gonzaga baseball opens the 2021 season this weekend with four high-profile matchups in Surprise, Arizona at the Sanderson Ford Baseball Classic, starting with New Mexico Friday at 4 p.m. PT.
Surprise Stadium — the Spring Training home of the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers — is the same place where the Zags started off 2020, facing BYU in a nonconference game along with Oregon State and New Mexico. This year, they'll match up with the Lobos and Beavers once apiece and Kansas State twice.
All three teams lean heavily on returning pitching cores from last season, with untested offenses all boosted by a posterity of returning players from the shortened season.
New Mexico is coming off of its best start in close to a decade last spring, when they finished the shortened season 14-4. That year, Lobos were No. 9 in the nation in hits, leading the Mountain West in scoring. UNM returns four pitchers who combined to go 6-0 with a 3.05 ERA last spring, and GU starter
Alek Jacob will likely get a matchup with third-year sophomore Troy Melton, ranked No. 79 on D1Baseball's top prospect list.
GU is 5-4 all-time against the Lobos, most recently defeating them 5-4 in their lone matchup in Surprise a year ago.
Kansas State will match up with GU on alternating days on Feb. 20 and 22. The Wildcats are unproven in a dominant Big 12 and haven't played in an NCAA Tourney since 2013, but return two of the top 10 pitching prospects in the conference in lefty Jordan Wicks and eighth Carson Seymour.
OSU had a humbling 2020, but the Beavers still have experience all over the field to go with scrappy, opportunistic offense. The 2018 CWS champions return plenty of talented pieces from that team, including 2018 Freshman of the Year Kevin Abel. They'll square off with GU on the 21st.
GU holds a 34-63 record against OSU all-time, but split two games with them in 2020. The Zags will head to Corvallis for two more games with the Beavs the first weekend of April to complete the season series.
The Zags start the season against UNM at 4 p.m. Paid streaming options will be available through FloBaseball. Visit GoZags.com for live streaming, live stats and up-to-date game day information.
