VILLANOVA, Pa.—What a difference a few hours makes.  The baseball team, set for the beginning of its 154^th varsity season, departed campus on Thursday afternoon with temperatures in the 40's and a breeze that made the air feel just above freezing.  Awaiting the Wildcats after a short flight to Orlando, Fla. this evening is a forecast for sunshine and temperatures that will hover near 80 throughout the weekend.
 
It is an ideal start to the year for Villanova, which will play three games in the Sunshine State Classic in Kissimmee to kick off its 53-game season slate.  First up for the Wildcats at Osceola Heritage Park is the season opener against Pittsburgh on Friday at 3 p.m., followed by games against Milwaukee on Saturday at 3 p.m. and George Mason on Sunday at 11 a.m.  Third-year head coach Kevin Mulvey announced his rotation for the opening weekend of the season, with senior right-hander Jonathan Rosero (Middle Village, N.Y.) to start the opener followed by sophomore righty Jimmy Kingsbury (Phoenixville, Pa.) and freshman right-hander Gordon Graceffo (Cranford, N.J.) in games two and three. 
 
At any level of baseball, few days of the season are better than the first one.  Opening Day is when optimism for a fresh start and new beginnings reaches its peak, and for Villanova the positive outlook begins with the momentum the team has built during a hard-working and enthusiastic offseason.  The product that the Wildcats will put on the field will have plenty of familiar faces, with as many as seven starters from 2018 returning to the lineup this year.  Villanova also brings back two of its weekend starting pitchers and its top three bullpen arms from a season ago.
 
This will be the second straight year that the Wildcats play games at Osceola Heritage Park, the former spring training complex for the Houston Astros and the current home of the minor league Florida Fire Frogs.  Villanova will return to Kissimmee again next month for the tail end of its Spring Break trip. 
 
Friday's season opener is against a Pittsburgh team that the Wildcats will be playing for the first time in six years.  The all-time series between the teams consists of 89 games, although the in-state foes had never faced each other prior to the debut of BIG EAST baseball in 1985 and have not met since the Panthers departed the conference after the 2013 season.  Villanova leads the series 51-38.    
 
There are seven Division I schools with the Panthers nickname, and the Wildcats face two of them in the first two days of the season.  Saturday's contest between Villanova and Milwaukee will be the first-ever between the schools on the baseball diamond and the third all-time in any sport.  In the first round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament, the men's basketball team defeated the Panthers by a score of 73-53 in a game played in Buffalo, N.Y.  The schools have also faced each other in women's soccer, with the Wildcats traveling to Milwaukee and tallying a 1-0 victory on October 1, 1999. 
 
Sunday's weekend finale will be a rematch from last season, as George Mason dealt Villanova a 6-1 defeat in Kissimmee on March 9, 2018 in the only previous game between the teams.  All of the runs in that contest were scored in the first four innings, and the Wildcats bullpen contributed seven scoreless frames after the Patriots had built an early lead.  Sophomore outfielder Chris Rotondo (Redding, Conn.) had two hits in the game for Villanova, while a triple by junior first baseman Ryan Toohers (Florham Park, N.J.) and a double by junior third baseman John Heilenbach (Western Springs, Ill.) in the fourth inning accounted for the Wildcats lone run. 
 
Villanova will follow its trip to Kissimmee with a three-game series at ACC member Virginia from February 22-24.