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Almost every sport has a preseason of some sort. Basketball has organized scrimmages and exhibition games. Musketeer Madness anyone? Football has its spring games and intra-squad drills. Baseball, on the other hand, has Fall Ball, where each school is given the opportunity to have an exhibition game and host some extra practices.
Each season, college baseball teams are permitted 56 games and most of them take place in the spring. However, the NCAA allows teams to hold some of those games during the fall as exhibition matches. Therefore, a team could choose to have 2 games in the fall and 54 during the spring. Ordinarily, teams take just one game for the fall season in order to have more games that "count" in the long run. In order to prepare for these exhibition matches, the NCAA allows teams to have 27 practices in September and October. This year, the Musketeers went extra innings to defeat Indiana (6-4) in Bloomington.
Although fall ball games subtract from the total number of team's regular season games, they provide a great opportunity for teams to develop chemistry and practice before the regular season gets underway. If this year's Fall Ball performance against Indiana is any indication of more success to come, the Musketeers must be anxious to keep up that momentum this weekend.