Feb. 23, 2004

The Notre Dame baseball team (2-0) – ranked as high as 10th in the national polls – has added a makeup game for this weekend in Boca Raton, Fla., after seeing Sunday’s game vs. Louisville washed out at the USC Classic. Notre Dame will face Florida Memorial College on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 2:00 p.m. EST. The extra game – which restores ND’s schedule to the maximum 56 games – will be played on the Florida Atlantic auxiliary field, with Notre Dame’s other games this weekend to be played at FAU’s primary baseball facility (FAU Field).

The broadcast facilities from the auxiliary field are limited but Notre Dame will continue to offer complete live commercial-radio coverage of every Irish baseball game, on South Bend-based ESPN Radio 1620 AM (WDND) and via the internet at www.und.com.

Notre Dame is slated to face a challenging field at this weekend’s FAU Classic, with Winthrop (35-22 in 2003), Florida Atlantic (47-16) and Minnesota (40-22) returning large chunks of their 2003 squads that combined to post a 122-60 record (the field’s combined ’03 record is 167-78, when adding ND’s 45-18). FAU currently is 10-0 and ranked 12th in the Collegiate Baseball magazine national poll while Minnesota is 25th in that poll (the Gophers have yet to play in 2004). Winthrop is off to a 4-1 start, after narrowly missing a spot in the 2003 NCAA Tournament (FAU and Minnesota both were 2003 NCAA regional teams).

The FAU Classic schedule includes Notre Dame facing Winthrop on Friday, Feb. 27 (1:00 p.m.) and the host Owls on Saturday night the 28th (7:00), followed by a Sunday morning game vs. Minnesota on the 29th (11:00 a.m.). Fans are reminded that the start times for the ND-Winthrop and ND-Minnesota games were moved up from the initial schedule release.

The Irish are nearing a +100 record during the past four seasons (146-49-1) and will be looking to post the program’s first 3-0 start since 1992, with Notre Dame typically facing several warm-weather schools at the start of each season.