Purdue baseball enters the 2025 season looking to finish a year strong. Greg Goff took over the program in 2020 after serving as an assistant under previous coach Mark Wasikowski. Waz had a successful run in West Lafayette and has since done quite well for himself at Oregon. Goff's run at Purdue has been a mixed bag.

The 2020 season was a wash, as Purdue was 7-7 when COVID cancelled the rest of the year. The Boilers came back and went 16-26 against an all-Big Ten slate in 2021. Thing started very well in 2022 as Purdue was the last unbeaten team in the country and spent some time in the top 25 before fading to 29-21 and going only 9-12 in the Big Ten.

Purdue could not sustain that success in 2023, going 24-29. Last year, with a very senior-heavy roster Purdue was in the running for the Big Ten title late in the season. As late as May 5th Purdue was 31-16, 12-5 in the Big Ten and it was leading Indiana in the ninth inning of the final game of a crucial three-game series. The Hoosiers rallied for a 5-4 win and that seemed to break Purdue's spirit.

The Boilers recovered to win the next two games against UIC and Michigan, but then lost seven straight. In the span of a couple weeks Purdue went from possibly winning the Big Ten and making the NCAA Tournament to finishing 33-24 and going 0-2 in the Big Ten Tournament.

That makes the 2025 season a big one for coach Goff. One of the biggest additions to the team was new assistant coach Greg Lovelady. The 45-year-old Lovelady has a 349–204 record at Wright State and Central Florida as a head coach, but was let go from UCF after the 2023 season. He had three 40-win seasons and three NCAA Tournament appearances as a head coach, two of those at Wright State. He was also a two-time national champion catcher for the Miami Hurricanes in 1999 and 2001 as a player.

Goff and Lovelady now have to attempt a near total rebuild of the program. The team graduated 21 players last year, and Big Ten Freshman of the Year Luke Gaffney was was lured away by Clemson via the transfer portal. Camden Gasser, Keenan Spence, Ty Gill, and Logan Sutter all return as regulars in the lineup, but Purdue has had to hit the portal hard to replace the lineup.

The pitching staff is almost entirely new. Cole Van Assen is the lone returning starter and he scattered eight midweek starts across last season.

Earlier this week Purdue released its 2025 schedule, and it has a nice balance.

The expansion of the Big Ten means an adjustment. With 17 baseball schools (Wisconsin does not have a program), the league will also expand to 30 conference games from 24. That means five home three-game series and five away three-game series in league play.

Also, as a northern team Purdue is forced to start the season away from home, and it will once again do so against a favorable schedule. It will open the season with four games agaisnt Stephen F. Austin (10-44) February 14th in Sugar Land, Texas, followed by two four game series agaisnt Niagara (38-17) and Akron (15-39) in Holly Springs, NC the following two weeks. Niagara was an NCAA TOurnament team last year, losing a pair of games in the Stillwater Regional.

In Big Ten play Purdue will host Michigan, UCLA, Rutgers, Northwestern, and Nebraska. It will travel to Minnesota, Washington, Penn State, Illinois, and Indiana. It also has an early home non-conference series against Illinois-Chicago.

Purdue has midweek home and home games agaisnt a very good Indiana State team that has done a lot of damage in the NCAA Tournament the last few years. It also has a home and home with Ball State.

One of the more interesting one-off games Purdue has is April 14 against Arizona State at Alexander Field. You can thank conference expansion for Purdue getting a rare home game against a five-time national champion. The Sun Devils are at Cincinnati in Big 12 play the weekend before and decided to give Purdue a Monday night game on their way home.

Overall, the schedule is manageable. Nebraska, Niagara, Indiana, Indiana State, and Illinois were NCAA teams a year ago. It is still a tough hill to climb for a program like Purdue.

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