The Bulldogs will look to improve upon last season’s campaign that ended at the hands of Louisiana-Lafayette in the regional phase of the college baseball season. The 2014-15 season will get underway Friday with a double header against Cincinnati and Miami (Ohio) to officially open up the new season. The Bulldogs will see Cincinnati twice more  over the weekend, as well as Miami once more, within their doubleheader on Saturday.  
The Cincinnati Bearcats are littered with a lot of young players, particularly freshmen, as roughly 75 percent of their roster is underclassmen. 
Bearcat Head Coach Ty Neal shrugged off the notion of poor performance based on youth and leaned toward categorizing the team’s youth as a positive. 
“I think it’s a good thing. At this level, the freshmen are your most enjoyable guys because they don’t realize when we open up the first weekend there will be 10,000 people,” Neal said. “They are still young enough to know that they are lucky just to be playing baseball. The youth there is a good thing. When freshmen can play at this level, they can excel at this level.” 
Some key players to look out for this weekend when the Bearcats take the field against the Bulldogs are outfielder Ian Happ and shortstop Connor Mcvey. Both players look like they will be the team’s on-the-field and off-the-field leaders heading into this season. Happ was named the preseason American Athletic Conference player of the year on Monday, adding to the plethora of other awards he has picked up this offseason. He will anchor the Bearcat outfield and their offensive production, as he returns as the team’s leader in batting average and hits.    
His teammate, Mcvey, has gained the respect of his manager, who views him as the leader of the entire team and has big aspirations for his sophomore. 
“Connor Mcvey has established himself as the leader of our team and leader of our defense, and right now he has been penciled in as our starting shortstop. But the two freshmen are very capable of potentially manning those other two positions,” Neal said. 
The one area of the Bearcat’s team that the Bulldogs more than likely can take advantage of this weekend will be the Cincinnati pitching staff, where the question marks are abundant going into the start of the 2015 season. Whether it be the youth that encompasses their pitching staff or the fact the only returning player from last season had below a 3.30 earned run average, the pitching staff will ultimately decide the fates of the Bearcat baseball team this season.  
With the likes of seniors Wes Rea, Jake Vickerson and Seth Heck strolling to the plate, the Bearcat pitchers will need to be very careful with their location this weekend. 
Even though it has been said countless times over the offseason, it bears mentioning again that the Bulldogs will be very good on the mound this season. Cohen said one name to keep an eye out for the Bulldogs this weekend and going forward is sophomore Austin Sexton, who has impressed coach Cohen during the offseason. 
“He had a great summer,” Cohen said. “He was 155 pounds as a freshman, and he almost weighs 190 pounds now. He’s someone who has a clean arm. He has a really, really good changeup. He has one of the better right-handed changeups in the league.” 
Miami, the other team traveling to Starkville this weekend, looks to compete not only for the MAC’s Eastern Division, title but the overall MAC Championship. The team has a roster filled with a majority of seniors and juniors who will want to keep the momentum going after a season where they finished above .500 and claimed the MAC Eastern Divisional crown for the first time since 2005. 
Miami’s second-year Head Coach Danny Hayden has his ball club heading in the right direction and he feels this year’s squad has the potential to be better than last year’s squad.
“I feel that the nucleus of what we did well last year offensively is back,” Hayden said. “We’ve got a lot of guys back that I feel really good about in the batter’s box.” 
Miami showed it could get the job done offensively last season as it lead its conference in hits and triples and finished second in overall team batting average at .284. This makes for a delightful weekend matchup between the Bulldogs’ pitching and the bats of the RedHawks. 
Miami’s pitching staff is especially strong. Last season, the RedHawks leaned heavily on the pitching staff in the absence of a reliable bullpen. That should not be the case this season, as they have added depth to the bullpen and should be a lot more balanced than in previous years. 
The RedHawks should choose to start both of the seniors in Ryan Powers or Nathan Williams this weekend against the Bulldogs. Powers will challenge Bulldog hitters with his elite talent. Ultimately, MSU will need to be balanced on both facets of the game, as the RedHawaks could take it by surprise.
Hayden was adamant earlier in the year his team was not coming to the state of Mississippi just to take in the experience, but rather pick up avictory. 
“When we go to Starkville, no one is going there and saying, ‘we’re going there for the experience,’” Hayden said. “We’re going there because they’re going to take our best punch, and we’ll see what happens at the end of the game. We’re going there to beat them.”
The action gets underway on Friday when the Bulldogs host Miami at noon and Cincinnati at 4 p.m. The weekend continues on Saturday with a double-header taking place against Miami and Cincinnati at noon and 4 p.m. Lastly, the Bulldogs finish up the weekend on Sunday, as they close out the weekend series against Cincinnati at 1:30 p.m. at Dudy Noble Field.