Leaders of the Ivy League and primed to threaten the 143-year-old program record for victories in a season, the Big Red baseball team will travel to Penn this weekend for a critical four-game series on Friday and Saturday. Doubleheaders are scheduled for noon each day. Sophomore outfielder Chris Cruz is also trying to set a program record for home runs in a season after tying the mark last weekend.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Penn
SITE: Philadelphia, Pa. — Mieklejohn Stadium
GAME 1 & 2: Friday, April 20
GAME 3 & 4: Saturday, April 21
TIME: First game at noon both days; second game approximately 30 minutes after completion of first game
LIVE STATS: http://www.pennathletics.com/liveStats/liveStats.dbml
2012 RECORDS: Cornell 24-10-1 (10-2 Ivy); Penn 15-17 (6-6 Ivy)
SERIES RECORD: Penn leads, 143-111-2
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 3-0 and 13-4, on April 25, 2011 at Ithaca, N.Y.
 
THIS JUST IN …
This weekend's four-game set between Cornell and Penn was moved up a day to Friday and Saturday in the hopes of avoiding inclement weather forecast for the greater Philadelphia area. Both doubleheaders retain their originally scheduled start times of noon. A steady dose of rain is expected Saturday through Monday.
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell is coming off just its second series loss of the season, having suffered a Tuesday doubleheader sweep at the hands of visiting Siena, 6-2 and 5-4. Four Big Red players made their first starts of the season in the games. It was a rare hiccup for the Big Red in what's proving to be a historic season. Cornell started the season 6-0 for the first time since 1906, then rattled off a 10-game Ivy League winning streak to take the Lou Gehrig Division lead coming into this weekend. Not only is it the Big Red's first 10-game Ivy winning streak since the league added baseball in 1993, it's just the sixth time in that span the team has won 10 Ivy games for the season (12 is the program record). Although it couldn't continue the trend against Siena, Cornell has showed a knack for late-game heroics. The Big Red had won six games this season entering its final at-bat either trailing or tied. Offensively, the Big Red's. 299 batting average entering the week was 50th among 291 Division I teams in the country, its .440 slugging percentage is 35th and its .388 on-base percentage is 45th. Six of the Big Red's regular players are currently hitting .288 or higher. Not to be ignored, Cornell's pitching staff has also been prominent in the early going, having surrendered just five home runs in 35 games and a no-hitter by sophomore Connor Kaufmann to its credit.
 
MORE THAN JUST A LITTLE HISTORY
The Big Red has been 16 games over .500 this season for just the second time in the program's 143-year history. The only other time Cornell was in a similar position was in 1977. A 10-7 victory in 12 innings over St. John's on May 26 in the program's first NCAA tournament appearance pulled the Big Red's record up to 28-13. Cornell won the next game, 9-7, vs. UConn, but the season ended after a pair of losses the next day to Temple and St. John's. The Big Red hasn't been to NCAAs since. With 11 games still remaining in the regular season, the Big Red has already surpassed its win total from each of the last 22 years. Cornell had 26 victories in the 1984 season, a number only achieved four times in program history. The record is the 29 wins from the aforementioned 1977 season.
 
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 140-124-1 (.530).
 
ABOUT PENN
The Quakers are led by Ithaca College graduate John Cole, standing at 15-17 after dropping five of their last six. In that stretch, Penn dropped non-league games to La Salle and St. Joseph's, sandwiched around a series loss last weekend at Princeton. The Quakers lost three of four to the defending Ivy League champions, winning the opener of Sunday's doubleheader in extra innings, 7-5. Penn is far from out of the title race, though. At 6-6 in the Ivy League, a strong showing this weekend could keep the Quakers in the pennant race if Columbia can take at least a game or two from Princeton this weekend. … The Quakers graduated three of their five first-team All-Ivy League selections from a season ago, but juniors 1B Spencer Branigan and CF Greg Zebrack return. Zebrack leads the Ivy League in slugging percentage (.757), runs (32), doubles (17) and total bases (84) while leading the team and holding third in the league with a .378 batting average. He also has a team-high 10 stolen bases. Branigan is hitting just .237 after posting a .296 average in 2011, but he is still tied for team lead in walks (14) and is second in RBI (22). … Junior RF Ryan Deitrich (.333, four HRs, nine 2Bs, 20 RBI) and sophomore 1B/3B/LF Rick Brebner (.305) are the squad's next-leading hitters. … Senior RHP Vince Voiro (5-2, 2.53) is the ace of the staff, having tossed four complete games in seven starts with 49 strikeouts in 53.1 innings. While he has just 10 walks to date this season, the Big Red has drawn 14 walks in Voiro's three career starts against it. In those three starts, Voiro is 1-1 with a 3.72 ERA and 11 strikeouts to go with the 14 free passes. … Penn's two other consistent weekend starters are sophomore RHP Cody Thomson (2-2, 3.00) and sophomore LHP Matt Gotschall (3-2, 4.79). Thomson had one appearance against Cornell as a freshman, pitching four innings in relief last season while surrendering seven hits and three earned runs. … No Penn reliever has an ERA under 5.00. freshman RHP Dan Gautieri (2-1, 5.03) leads the bunch with 14 appearances, one ahead of freshman LHP Stephen Silvestri (0-0, 5.68) and junior RHP John Beasley (1-1, 9.82).
 
SERIES HISTORY vs. PENN
Penn is the most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games running the series tally to 260 games. The first meeting between the teams was May 21, 1888, with the Quakers securing a 20-5 victory. The Big Red answered back the following day, winning 10-8. While Penn has the series advantage, 143-111-2, Cornell has enjoyed success in the most recent meetings between the squads. In the last 34 meetings, the Big Red is 24-10 against the Quakers with just one series loss in the last nine years. Cornell's only four-game sweep of a Lou Gehrig Division series since the Ivy League added baseball play 19 years ago came against Penn in 2005. All of last season's four games between the sides ended in regulation innings, ending a streak of four straight years with extra-inning tilts between the sides. Cornell won all four of them.
 
UNHITTABLE
Sophomore RHP Connor Kaufmann tossed the program's first no-hitter in nearly 32 years on a dreary Sunday against Dartmouth. He needed just 80 pitches to mow down the Big Green for seven innings on a day in which the mound was under constant repair due to a steady rain. Kaufmann faced the minimum 21 batters, retiring the final 16 consecutively after walks in the first and second innings. No runner advance past first base — the first was doubled off on a flyout to right, then the second was picked off by Kaufmann. For his efforts, Kaufmann became the first Cornellian to be tabbed as the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week since Corey Pappel on April 28, 2009. The last Big Red no-hitter was tossed by Kerry Brooks, Rob Wilson and Doug Petillo against Rochester on April 5, 1989 in another seven-inning affair. The last solo no-hitter for Cornell was April 8, 1979, when Greg Myers worked five innings in a 1-0 victory over Canisius. To find the last Big Red solo no-hitter of at least seven innings, you would have to go back to Larry Rafalski's nine-inning blanking of Hartwick on April 25, 1968.
 
DON'T BE FOOLED
Sophomore RHP Connor Kaufmann has a 3.89 ERA, but he's been a lot better than that number would indicate. Throw away his worst start of the year on March at Delaware State and Kaufmann is 5-0 with a 2.00 ERA. In three Ivy League starts, Kaufmann Is 2-0 with a 0.89 ERA, including an eight-inning complete game without surrendering an unearned run in a 2-1 victory over Columbia on April 15. That effort earned him Ivy League Pitcher of the Week for the second time this season.

CRUZ CONTROL
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 11 home runs in 33 games, Cruz is just the third Cornellian to reach double-digits in home runs in a season. He has tied the program record, originally set by Eric Kirby in 1995 and matched in 2002 by Erik Rico. Cruz's 11 home runs leads the Ivy League and is 11th in the nation, five behind Eastern Tennessee's Matthew Scruggs, and his slugging percentage of .659 ranks 32nd as of Monday.
 
THE HITS KEEP COMING
The Big Red has already had two lengthy hitting streaks come and go this season. Senior shortstop Marshall Yanzick had a 19-game hitting streak — which dated back to late 2011 — snapped March 23 at Longwood. Then classmate Brian Billigen had a 16-game hitting streak halted March 31, a stretch that included nine games with multiple hits. Billigen has 45 hits with a gaudy .409 batting average, which ranks first in the Ivy League (by 26 points) and 20th in the country as of Monday. Billigen also has a .664 slugging percentage, which ranks 28th.
 
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.
 
FANTASTIC FRESHMEN
Cornell has already more than doubled its win total from last season, with an impact freshman class making its mark in the early going. Freshman RHP Kellen Urbon leads the team with 15 appearances out of the bullpen, and he has seven saves with a miniscule 0.83 earned-run average and opponents hitting just .184 against him. Even though he leads the team with seven saves, Urbon is more than just a closer — he pitched five scoreless innings of relief in the Big Red's 11-inning victory over Brown on April 7, with just one runner advancing past first base. … On the starters' side, freshman RHP Brian McAfee is 5-0 with a sterling 32:5 walk-to-strikeout ratio. He tossed eight shutout innings with three strikeouts in a 3-0 victory over Columbia on Sunday, earning Ivy League Co-Rookie of the Week honors. McAfee took a no-hitter into the fifth inning and yielded just three hits on the day. His ERA of 3.35 is tied for the team lead among starters. Classmate RHP Brent Jones is just one strikeout behind McAfee for the team lead, having tossed three complete games in March.
 
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. Ishida then made his first collegiate start on Tuesday against Siena, tossing three scoreless innings.

UP NEXT
The Big Red returns home for the stretch drive, hosting Binghamton in its non-league finale at 4 p.m. Tuesday. Cornell then plays four games against Princeton to close out the regular season, hosting a doubleheader on Friday, April 27 before traveling to New Jersey for the finale on Sunday, April 29.