Missouri State University’s baseball team will host the University of Memphis for a three-game series at Hammons Field in Springfield, Missouri, this weekend. The series begins on Friday, March 6, with the opening game moved to a 1 p.m. start time. The following games are scheduled for Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
Sunday’s game will feature “Future Bears Day,” including pregame autographs starting at 12:20 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online or at the Hammons Field box office, which opens one hour before each game. Admission is free for MSU students.
The Bears currently hold a 7-5 record and are entering their final non-conference series of the season against Memphis, who stands at 3-9. Since head coach Joey Hawkins became hitting coach in 2022, Missouri State has established itself as a strong power-hitting team, ranking eighth nationally with 442 home runs over that period. Last season’s total of 109 home runs was the fourth highest in school history. This year, they have already hit 20 home runs, placing them second in Conference USA and twenty-third nationally.
TruMedia data shows Missouri State hitters rank third nationally in hard-hit percentage—52.3 percent of batted balls travel at least 95 mph—and tenth in average exit velocity at 90.9 mph, making them one of the top non-Power Four schools in these categories.
Junior Caden Bogenpohl has drawn national attention by ranking second with 19 walks this season and accumulating a career total of 127 walks—fourth all-time at Missouri State and fifth among active Division I players nationwide. He also ranks tied for fifteenth in school history with thirty-five career home runs.
Senior Taeg Gollert leads all NCAA divisions with sixty-two career doubles and is closing in on two program records: he is five doubles shy of Brayden Drake’s record (sixty-seven) and needs twenty-six extra-base hits to match Jason Hart’s mark (116). Gollert also ranks sixteenth among active Division I players with two hundred two hits and thirtieth with one hundred thirty-six RBIs.
Under Joey Hawkins’ leadership, Missouri State holds a home record of twenty-three wins and seven losses while posting a .326 batting average and .622 slugging percentage at Hammons Field over thirty games.
Pitching remains a strength for the Bears; last season they ranked thirty-second nationally with an average of 9.51 strikeouts per nine innings—their best since 1969—and Tyler Charlton set a new school record averaging nearly thirteen strikeouts per nine innings. This year’s team averages nearly ten strikeouts per nine innings, highlighted by a seventeen-strikeout performance against Oklahoma State on March 3.
Max Knight and Curry Sutherland continue to serve as key two-way players for Missouri State. Knight was recognized as an NCBWA All-American last year after being the only player nationwide to achieve at least forty-five innings pitched, forty-five RBIs, and fifty-five pitching strikeouts. Sutherland contributed both as a regular third baseman and pitcher last season.
This year marks Missouri State’s first season competing in Conference USA after spending thirty-five years in the Missouri Valley Conference, where they won seven regular-season championships and five tournament titles between 1991 and 2025.
