Starting 9
1) Missouri State (5-9) will play 11 of its next 13 games at Hammons Field, beginning with a 3 p.m. Tuesday game with Oral Roberts (10-4). ORU topped the Bears 8-7 in 10 innings on Feb. 25 in Tulsa.
2) The Bears are 32-36 all-time against ORU with a 15-12 record in Springfield. While MoState has won eight of 10 in the series in Tulsa, the Golden Eagles are 3-2 at Hammons Field since 2020. In the Feb. 25 game this season, MSU scored five in the first and two in the ninth, and ORU won it on a single in the 10th.
3) The Bears have homered in 118 of the last 145 games, and rank 14th nationally with 330 long balls since the beginning of the 2022 season, when first-year head coach Joey    Hawkins took over as hitting coach. MoState's 114 homers last season ranked second in school and fourth in MVC history.
4) Zack Stewart (34),
Caden Bogenpohl (23),
Taeg Gollert (22) and
Nick Rodriguez (21) all have at least 20 homers in their MSU careers, and the current roster has combined for 130 round-trippers in their time at MoState.
5) Missouri State's pitching staff leads the MVC and ranks 35th nationally with 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings. The Bears' 2.26 K/BB ratio also leads the Valley and ranks 78th nationally, and the Bears have struck out at least seven hitters in every game this season.
   Two-thirds of the Bears' weekend rotation (
Michael Yusypchuk and
Jackson Holmes) have earned MVC Pitcher of the Week honors, while Yusypchuk (1st - 27) and
Tyler Charlton (5th - 22) are both in the top five in strikeouts
6) Four former Freshman All-Americans are on the MSU roster.
Nick Rodriguez received the honor in 2022 at Charleston Southern,
Garrett Ferguson and
Zack Stewart each landed on multiple such teams for MSU in 2023, and
Caden Bogenpohl did the same last year for the Bears.
7) D1Baseball tabbed the Bears as the favorite to win the MVC this season, with sophomore
Caden Bogenpohl as its preseason player of the year and
Michael Yusypchuk as its freshman of the year. The MVC will release its preseason poll and all-conference teams on March 17 entering the first weekend of league play.
8) For the first time since 1983, the Bears have a new coach.
Joey Hawkins, who played for the Bears from 2012-15 and served as assistant coach from 2022-24, is just the third head coach in program history. Bill Rowe managed the Bears from 1964-82 before becoming the school's athletic director. Keith Guttin, who played for MSU under Rowe, succeeded him in 1983 before retiring after the 2024 campaign. In their respective first seasons, Rowe went 6-12 overall in 1964, while Guttin's 1983 club went 32-11 and led the nation with a .367 batting average.
9) The 2025 season will be Missouri State's 35th and final year in the MVC. The university accepted an invitation to Conference USA on May 10, 2024, and will officially join that league on July 1, 2025. The baseball Bears own the most league wins (471) and highest MVC winning percentage (.581) of any current league school with six regular season championships and five tournament titles in 34 seasons.
