On Saturday the Indiana baseball team will open up its season on the road against the Memphis Tigers. They’ll do so with a new face in the dugout.

Jeff Mercer was named as the head coach of the Hoosiers in July following the departure of Chris Lemonis, who took the Mississippi State job. With a new job come plenty of new faces but in his first weekend in the dugout for Indiana, Mercer will be going head to head with a face that he’s known for a long time.

“My dad and Coach Schoenrock have been friends for 25 years,” Mercer said. “I grew up around Coach Rock and they’re gonna be prepared excellently, like he’s always done, spent a long time in the SEC at Kentucky so you expect them to be able to go out, execute at a high level, be very well prepared and coached and they have a track record of having very good players.”

Despite near freezing temperatures on Sunday, Mercer attended practice in a short sleeve shirt.

Despite losing two major pieces from last year’s starting lineup—Logan Sowers and Luke Miller—the majority of the players in the field should look familiar to Hoosier fans.

“Cole Barr is gonna be in there quite a bit, what happens in left field between (Elijah) Dunham and (Drew) Ashley and (Sam) Crail and some of those guys will be to see,” Mercer said. “Matt Lloyd likely at first base, and then the (Cade) Bunnell and (Justin Walker) situation at second and (Jeremy) Houston at short and then we’ll kinda roll from there.”

Senior utility player Matt Lloyd will be a key player for the Hoosiers. He's expected to start at first base and serve as the team's closer.

Lloyd was a key member of the lineup last year for Indiana. The utilityman received multiple All-American honors in 2018 and was named first-team All-Big Ten after hitting .275 with nine home runs and 41 runs batted in on the season. He also served as the team’s closer, posting a 4-2 record with a 1.54 earned run average and seven saves. Heading into the season the senior has said that he’ll do whatever the team needs to do to win, but also praised Indiana’s new offensive philosophy. He said that in the past the team was too reliant on hitting home runs and this year the Hoosiers should be able to score runs “in a couple of different ways.”

First pitch between Indiana and Memphis will be on Saturday at 1 p.m.