The UTRGV Vaqueros baseball team is less than 24 hours away from Opening Day.

The team is set to welcome in Southern Illinois for a three-game series in Edinburg.

"It's unbelievable when the last game hits and the season, how long it feels all the way back to the first game so we've been getting after it," UTRGV head coach Derek Matlock said. "There's so many practices that go into it so were just all excited, I'm just excited to watch some of these new guys play, some of these old guys that had great years play and it's exciting."

Last season, Southern Illinois finished with a record of 33-27. It's the fifth time these two teams have faced off, dating back to UTRGV's time as UTPA.

The Vaqueros have never beaten Southern Illinois with an 0-4 record.

"Just looking at them we know they've had some good years," Matlock said of Southern Illinois. "They play in a good conference, there's a lot of great teams in that conference, but they've got some power it looks like, some big free swingers, got a lot of good left handed pitching, just from the first parts of the scouting reports were starting to go over, a great coach, man, it's a great program, anytime you're in a big city, or close to a big huge area, there's plenty of players to go find, all you gotta do is go work so, it'll be challenging, it'll be a challenge, it's gonna be how we play not really anything about how good they are."

First pitch for the game on Friday is set for 6:30 p.m. with the series continuing into the weekend.