The baseball team's arduous stretch of 18 road games to start the season concludes Tuesday with a doubleheader at Albany. The Big Red is 12-4 for the first time since 1982 with the start of Ivy League play looming.

GAME INFORMATION
SITE: Albany, N.Y. — Varsity Field
2012 RECORDS: Cornell 12-4, Albany 5-15
SERIES RECORD: First meeting
DAY: Tuesday, March 27, 2012
TIME: First game at 2 p.m.; second game approximately 30 minutes after completion of first game
LIVE STATS: www.ualbanysports.com/liveStats/liveStats.dbml
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell started the season 6-0 for the first since 1906 and is now 12-4 for the first time in 30 years, having swept a three-game series at Longwood to end a successful Spring Break trip that featured eight games in seven days. The Big Red posted a 5-3 record over that stretch, taking two of three at Delaware State to start before Virginia Tech rallied to win a pair of mid-week games. The Big Red bats are a large reasons why the team is off to such a hot start. The team's .356 batting average was leading all 291 Division I teams in the country as of March 18. Now batting .335, the Big Red has eight regular players hitting .300 or higher and an average of 3.19 extra-base hits per game.

THE HEAD COACH
In his fourth season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball at Cornell University, Bill Walkenbach guided the Big Red to a share of its first division title since 2005 in his first season. Named head coach on Aug. 14, 2008, Walkenbach is in his second stint as a coach for the Big Red, having previously served as an assistant coach under current associate head coach Tom Ford from 2003-05. He returned to Cornell after spending three seasons as the head coach at Franklin & Marshall, guiding the Diplomats to an NCAA tournament berth in 2006 and a 69-42 record. Now in his seventh season as a collegiate head coach, Walkenbach has a career record of 128-119 (.518).

ABOUT ALBANY
The Great Danes are 5-15 after getting swept in a three-game series over the weekend at Coastal Carolina. Albany has dropped eight of its last nine, with its lone victory in that stretch coming in its home opener on March 20, a 10-3 win over Marist. Austin Chase (1-0, 5.47) earned the victory with seven innings of work, and could be in line to start against the Big Red with Sean Lucas (1-3, 5.53), Kasceim Graham (1-3, 5.52) and Zach Kraham (0-4, 6.75) serving as the team's other primary starters. Opposing teams are hitting .325 against the Great Danes. … Mike Tirri leads the team in batting average (.333) and on-base percentage (.424), and Pete DiResta is hitting .325 with a team-high 27 hits, three home runs and .518 slugging percetange. Nolan Gaige has a team-best 13 RBI and five steals. While he is batting .256 on the year, he has hit better than .300 in each of the last two seasons.
 
SERIES HISTORY
Despite their proximity to each other, this will be the first meeting between Cornell and Albany.

GO LONG
Sophomore Chris Cruz started his season off with a bang against Maryland-Eastern Shore, smashing two home runs in Saturday's first game en route to a 15-4 victory, then he added two more roundtrippers the following weekend at George Washington. Now up to six home runs in just 16 games, Cruz has already doubled his total from the 2011 season.
 
THE HITS KEEP COMING
Senior Brian Billigen has a 14-game hitting streak heading into Tuesday's games at Albany. He has 29 hits in 15 of the Big Red's 16 games this season with an astronomical .433 batting average. … Senior Marshall Yanzick had a 19-game hitting streak snapped Friday at Longwood.
 
AND THE AWARD GOES TO ...
Senior Brian Billigen was named the Ivy League Player of the Week on March 6. Batting third in the lineup, Billigen was 8-for-18 (.444) in the four games against Maryland-Eastern Shore with a .833 slugging percentage. He finished the weekend with six runs, two doubles, one triple, one home run, one stolen base and 10 RBI. In the span of two innings in the season-opener, Billigen recorded a three-run triple and a two-run double. In the series finale, he finished a triple shy of the cycle, going 4-for-5 with two runs, four RBIs and a stolen base. It was the first time a Cornellian won the award since Nate David shared the honor on April 28, 2009.

SAVING THE DAY
Senior Jeeter Ishida earned a save in his first appearance on March 3, working four innings of relief in a 15-4 victory over Maryland-Eastern Shore in his first game action since 2009. The Hawaii native was named the Honolulu Star-Bulletin State Player of the Year in 2006 and 2007, helping the Punahou School capture five straight state titles. Ishida appeared seven times as a freshman at Arizona State, then didn't pitch his sophomore season before transferring to Cornell. He had to sit out his junior year as per NCAA transfer rules.

UP NEXT
After 18 road games to open the season, the Big Red finally makes its Hoy Field debut this weekend while also opening Ivy League play. Harvard will be in town for a Saturday doubleheader, then Cornell will play reigning Rolfe Division champion Dartmouth in another doubleheader on Sunday.