NEW YORK — The home stretch of the baseball season begins this weekend when Ivy League intradivision play kicks off with the Big Red taking on Lou Gehrig Division-leading Columbia in a four-game set at the Lions' Robertson Field at Satow Stadium.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Columbia
SITE: Robertson Field at Satow Stadium
GAMES 1 & 2: Saturday, April 13, 2013
GAMES 3 & 4: Sunday, April 14, 2013
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after the completion of the first game
WEBCAST (video only): http://www.gocolumbialions.com/liveEvents/liveEvents.dbml?SPID=3883&db_oem_id=9600
AUDIO: www.ustream.tv/channel/cornellatbat
LIVE STATS: http://www.gocolumbialions.com/liveStats/liveStats.dbml?SPID=3883&DB_OEM_ID=9600&LIST_SPORT_KEY=M_BASEBALL
2013 RECORDS: Cornell 17-10 (5-3 Ivy League); Columbia 14-15 (6-2 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 123-96
LAST MEETING: Cornell won the first three of a four-game series April 14-15, 2012 in Ithaca, N.Y. (2-1 win, 3-0 win, 5-4 win, 5-1 loss)
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell split both of its Ivy League doubleheaders last weekend, winning one game apiece at both Harvard and Dartmouth. Sophomore Nick Busto pitched his second consecutive complete game, silencing the Crimson in a 3-1 victory in Saturday's opener. Junior Zach McCulley then dominated in the second game of Sunday's meeting with Dartmouth, a 3-0 win in a rematch of the 2012 Ivy League Championship Series. McCulley threw a four-hit shutout after the Big Red took a first-inning lead off RBI hits from sophomore Matt Hall and junior Ryan Plantier. At the conclusion of Ivy interdivision play, the Big Red sits in a three-way tie for second place in the Lou Gehrig Division. Cornell, Penn and Princeton all trail Columbia by one game. … Rain washed out the Big Red's last scheduled game, a Wednesday afternoon affair against regional rival Binghamton. The game has not been rescheduled at this time. … Sophomore JD Whetsel has taken over the team lead with a .312 average, and he also leads the squad in runs (21), total bases (39), stolen bases (12) and on-base percentage (.423). … Junior Chris Cruz and sophomore Kevin Tatum have a team-high two homers. Both of Tatum's home runs and five of his 11 RBIs came in the same game — a 10-9 win March 19 at Davidson. Cruz missed the first half of the season with an injury, but has already has six extra-base hits and a .576 slugging percentage through 10 games. … The Big Red pitching staff has been stellar in Ivy League play, leading the circuit with a 1.87 earned run average over the first eight games. McCulley hasn't surrendered a run and yielded just one extra-base hit in 12.2 innings. Sophomore Brian McAfee, an All-Ivy League Second Team selection last season, has a 0.64 ERA in two league starts, and Busto is 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA. For the season, Busto's 1.38 ERA ranks 42nd in the country.
 
THE HEAD COACH
In his fifth season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball at Cornell University, Bill Walkenbach has brought the Big Red into the spotlight with the program's first league title since 1977 and its first Ivy League title since the circuit added baseball 20 years ago. 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 eighth season as a collegiate head coach, Walkenbach has a career record of 162-139-1 (.538).
 
ABOUT COLUMBIA
The Lions find themselves atop the Lou Gehrig Division after sweeping Harvard, Yale and Brown in interdivision play over the last two weeks. Their two losses were both against Dartmouth on March 31, leaving the Lions with a one-game lead in the division over Cornell, Penn and Princeton. In its last game, Columbia secured a 5-3 win over St. John's — a 2012 College World Series participant — on Tuesday. … Junior INF Aaron Silbar is the team's only .300 hitter, batting .313. Senior INF/RHP Alex Black is hitting .276 with a four home runs, which ranks highest among any player in the Ivy League. Senior OF Nick Ferraresi is close behind with three home runs to go with a team-high 17 RBIs. Sophomore INF/OF Jordan Serena and senior INF Nick Crucet have combined for 26 of the team's 40 stolen bases. The Lions' 11 stolen bases in Ivy play leads the league. … Junior LHP David Speer (3-2, 2.13) and senior RHP Tim Giel (2-2, 3.15) are the Lions' front-line starters and figure to start this weekend's seven-inning games. Junior RHP Joey Donino (3-0, 4.10) and freshman RHP Adam Cline (2-3, 4.40) have started the team's four nine-inning league games so far. … Thomas Crispi (1-3, 3.00) has a team-high 11 appearances out of the bullpen, followed by Mike Weisman's nine (0-0, 0.73, one save). Black (0-1, 4.35) has been the team's primary closer with three saves.
 
SERIES HISTORY vs. COLUMBIA
Columbia is the third-most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games running the series tally to 223 games. The first meeting between the teams was June 1, 1885, with Cornell securing a 10-4 victory en route to a perfect 12-0 mark for the year. … Cornell won three of the four meetings last season. The first game went to extra innings after the Big Red's Kevin Tatum hit a double to score pinch runner Spenser Souza in the bottom of the seventh to tie the game at 1. Ryan Plantier then drove in the winning run in the eighth with a sacrifice fly. Connor Kaufmann pitched a complete game for the victory. Brian McAfee then tossed eight shutout innings to buoy the Big Red to a 3-0 win in Game 2. Chris Cruz and Tom D'Alessandro homered in Cornell's five-run third inning, and Nick Busto earned the victory in a 5-4 win in Game 3. Columbia bounced back with a 5-1 win in the series finale. … This is the 21st season of Ivy League baseball and its scheduling format of having divisional opponents play each four times each year. Over that span, only one sweep has occurred in the Cornell-Columbia series, when the Lions swept doubleheaders April 23-24, 1994 at Hoy Field.
 
MORE THAN A LITTLE HISTORY
Cornell is coming off a 2012 season which was filled with dramatic victories, marked by a perfect 5-0 mark in extra-inning affairs. The Big Red went 31-17-1 to set a program record for victories, win the Ivy League title and advance to the NCAA Regionals. It was an extraordinary turnaround in just a year's time after the Big Red posted a 10-30 record in 2011. The team's 14-6 record in Ivy League play was also a program high in either the Ivy League or Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League. Not surprisingly, Cornell mopped up with 11 All-Ivy selections, including a pair of first-team pitchers in Connor Kaufmann, who returns for his junior season, and Kellen Urbon, who returns as a sophomore.
 
REMEMBER ME?
Junior OF Chris Cruz is back in the fold, playing his first 10 games of the season in results weeks after an injury held him out of action for the Big Red's first 17 contests. He wasted no time making his presence felt, going 4-for-4 with a bunt single, double and a home run to lead the Big Red to a 4-1 victory over Brown on March 30. Cruz set a single-season program record for home runs in 2012, bashing 12 — the last one coming in walk-off fashion in decisive Game 3 of the Ivy League Championship Series.
 
CONTROL FREAK
Sophomore RHP Brian McAfee has 21 strikeouts compared to just four walks over his first six starts, which puts him among some of the nation's stingiest pitchers when it comes to issuing free passes. As of April 7, McAfee ranked 23rd among NCAA Division I pitchers in walks allowed per nine innings (0.98), 37th in WHIP (0.90) and 61st in strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.25). The trend is nothing new for McAfee. An All-Ivy League Second Team selection as a freshman last season, he posted a 6-1 record and had a 41:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His average of 1.35 walks per nine innings and 0.88 WHIP are both ranked 35th in the nation.
 
SPEED KILLS
Cornell ranked 28th in the nation in stole bases per game (1.81) coming into this week. Ten players already have stolen bases for the Big Red, and five have stolen more than five bases. Sophomore JD Whetsel leads the team with 12 stolen bases, which ranks 76th nationally.
 
AN HONORABLE POSITION
Sophomore JD Whetsel was named The Ivy League's Player of the Week on March 19. He had a breakthrough weekend offensively, helping Cornell to a pair of victories in a three-game series against 2012 NCAA Regional finalist Appalachian State. Whetsel was 6-for-11 with seven runs, a pair of extra-base hits, three walks and three stolen bases. One of those extra-base hits was a three-run home run — the first of his collegiate career. Whetsel became the first Big Red player to earn the award since the player he replaced as the starting center fielder, Brian Billigen '12, won the honor on March 2, 2012. He has now reached base safely in 25 of the Big Red's 27 games.
 
UNHITTABLE
Junior RHP Connor Kaufmann tossed the program's first no-hitter in nearly 32 years on April 1, 2012 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 last solo no-hitter for Cornell was April 8, 1979, when Greg Myers worked five innings in a 1-0 victory over Canisius. Kaufmann went on to be selected as an All-Ivy League First Team selection.
 
URBON LEGEND
Sophomore RHP Kellen Urbon made quite a statement in his 21 appearances last season. He set a program record with nine saves, and his miniscule 0.47 earned-run average was the lowest ever recorded by a Cornell pitcher who has seen more than 30 innings of action. Not surprisingly, he has reeled in countless awards and honors as a result. Urbon was a unanimous selection as a first-team relief pitcher and was also named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year — the first time a Cornellian has taken the award since head coach Bill Walkenbach did it himself in 1995. He was also a Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American and a National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association's Preseason All-America Third Team selection in December.
 
UP NEXT
Cornell is scheduled to conclude its stretch of 10 straight games on the road with a nonleague doubleheader at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Siena. The Big Red then returns to Hoy Field in Ithaca, N.Y. for a Gehrig Division series April 20-21 against Penn.