ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Cornell baseball team opens up the 2010 Ivy League slate with a pair of doubleheaders this weekend at Hoy Field, taking on reigning league champion Dartmouth on Saturday before matching up against Harvard on Sunday. Both doubleheaders are slated to begin at noon, with live video of all four games available through the Cornell Redcast subscription service.

Cornell is coming off a 7-6 loss on Wednesday at LeMoyne in Syracuse, N.Y., the fourth straight defeat for the Big Red, which is 4-7 on the season. Cornell's last win came on March 27 at Army, a 10-4 victory.

Brian Billigen and Mickey Brodsky lead the Cornell offense on the season, with both players hitting .351 on the season. Also hitting above .300 are Nate David (.342) and Brandon Lee (.333), with David leading the squad with seven runs scored and a pair of home runs. Billigen and David share the team lead with seven runs batted in apiece, while Brodsky and Frank Hager are tied for team-high honors with four doubles. David has also been outstanding on the base paths, being a perfect 4-for-4 in stolen base attempts.

On the mound for Cornell, Corey Pappel and Taylor Wood have both started three games on the year, with Pappel posting a 3.38 earned-run average in 16 innings of work. Pappel has a team-high 23 strikeouts, the only Big Red pitcher in double figures in that category. Wood, meanwhile, ha a 5.94 earned-run average in a team-best 16.2 innings. Jadd Schmeltzer has two starts and a 9.31 earned-run average, while Mickey Brodsky (2.25) and Tony Bertucci (3.48) have both started once. David Rochefort has earned a pair of saves this season to raise his school record total to 10 for his career.

Dartmouth enters the weekend at 6-8 overall after having a Wednesday contest at Siena rained out. The Big Green has gone just 2-4 over its last six games, picking up a win against Northwestern, falling twice to Illinois and losing the first two games of a three-game set at Bethune-Cookman. As a team, Dartmouth is hitting .310 with a .743 earned-run average. Offensively, the Big Green has eight regulars batting better than .300 on the season, led by Jeff Onstott's .360 average. Jason Brooks has two home runs to lead the squad, while Brooks and Onstott are tied for the team lead with 13 runs batted in. Ennis Coble has a team-best 12 runs scored on the year. On the mound, Dartmouth has used six pitchers almost exclusively, with Michael Johnson posting a team-best 3.27 earned-run average in 11 innings of work. Robert Young has seent he most action, posting a 4.95 earned-run average in 20 innings, while Cole Sulser has a team-best 21 strikeouts in 19 innings of work with a 5.21 earned-run average.

The Crimson enter the weekend's games with a 6-11 overall record, playing a single game at Holy Cross on Thursday, and will face Princeton in a doubleheader on Saturday before taking on the Big Red on Sunday. Harvard has won three straight games, taking a twinbill from Hartford and splitting a doubleheader against Sacred Heart last weekend. Prior to the three-game winning streak, the Crimson had lost eight straight contests. Harvard has a team batting average of .229, with only two regular players (Marcus Way and Jeff Reynolds) batting better than .300 on the year. Samuel Franklin has a team-best 13 runs scored, while Dan Zailskas has 10 runs batted in to lead the Crimson. On the mound, Harvard has a team earned-run average of 7.13. Six regulars have worked the majority of innings for the Crimson, led by Will Keuper's 2.53 earned-run average in 10.2 innings of work. Six different pitchers have recorded one win on the year, while Conner Hulse, owner of one of those wins, has a team-best 23 strikeouts in 25.1 innings pitched.

Last season, Cornell was swept by both Harvard and Dartmouth, losing to the Crimson, 6-5 and 7-5, before dropping two games of a slugfest to the Big Green, 13-8 and 14-11. Cornell would still go on to win the Ivy League Gehrig Division, and took on Dartmouth in the Ivy League Championship Series, stretching the series to the limit before Dartmouth ultimately claimed the league title and the automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.

Cornell will remain home after the four games this weekend to take on Binghamton in a 3:30 p.m. contest on Tuesday at Hoy Field in Ithaca. The Big Red will then close out cross-divisional play next weekend when it travels to Yale on Saturday and Brown on Sunday for a pair of doubleheaders.