ITHACA, N.Y. — Baseball will try to make up ground in the Ivy League Lou Gehrig Division standings this weekend when its plays host to Penn in a four-game series at Hoy Field. The series will feature doubleheaders start at noon on both Saturday and Sunday. Cornell and Penn are currently tied for third place in the division, three games back of Columbia.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Penn at Cornell
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
GAMES 1 & 2: Saturday, April 20, 2013
GAMES 3 & 4: Sunday, April 21, 2013
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after the completion of the first game
AUDIO: www.ustream.tv/channel/cornellatbat
LIVE STATS: http://sidearmstats.com/cornell/baseball
2013 RECORDS: Cornell 18-13 (6-6 Ivy League); Penn 20-14 (6-6 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Penn leads, 144-114-2
LAST MEETING: Cornell won the first three of a four-game series April 20-21, 2012 in Philadelphia (3-0 win, 9-5 win, 3-0 win, 4-3 loss)
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell won one of its four games over the weekend at Columbia, which leads the Ivy League's Lou Gehrig Division with eight games to be play in the regular season. The Big Red is tied with Penn three games back of the Lions and two games behind second-place Princeton. The Big Red was then rained out of its scheduled Tuesday doubleheader at Siena. … The Big Red managed just one run in last Saturday's doubleheader at Columbia, which came when senior Conor McCabe and sophomore Kevin Tatum hit back-to-back doubles in the fifth inning of the first game. The bats then came alive in the opener of Sunday's twin bill. Both of freshman Eliot Lowell's hits came in extra innings, with the latter driving in senior pinch runner Forrest Crawford for the winning run in the 10th inning. Sophomore Eric Upton tossed 4.1 innings of scoreless long relief to earn the victory, and freshman Matt Horton locked down his second collegiate save with consecutive strikeouts to strand an inherited runner at third base. Columbia then won the finale, 5-2. … Sophomore JD Whetsel has the team lead with a .302 average, and he also leads the squad in runs (22), total bases (43), stolen bases (14) and on-base percentage (.417). … 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. … The Big Red pitching staff has once again been stellar, ranking second in the Ivy League with a 3.35 earned run average for the season.
 
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 163-142-1 (.534).
 
ABOUT PENN
The Quakers are coming off a Wednesday nonleague rout of Lehigh, 13-2, after losing three of four games over the weekend to Princeton in their Gehrig Division-opening series. The two nine-inning games were decided by a single run, with Penn holding off Princeton for a 8-7 victory in the series' second game on Saturday. The finale then went to 10 innings after the Quakers rallied to tie the game with three runs in the bottom of the ninth, but the Tigers won on the strength of Alec Keller's 10th-inning home run. … Senior OF Ryan Deitrich leads the team in average (.408), runs (29), slugging percentage (.617), walks (22), on base percentage (.523) and stolen bases (10), and he's tied for the team lead with junior 3B Rick Brebner with four home runs. Senior 1B Spencer Branigan (.342) joins freshman INF Mike Vilardo (.326) as the other players hitting at .300 or better. Vilardo has a team-leading 21 extra-base hits and 30 RBIs. … Sophomore OF Connor Betbeze is the team's leading hitter in Ivy League play with a .370 average in eight league games. … Penn's rotation is entirely right-handed — sophomore Connor Cuff (4-3, 5.31), sophomore Jeff McGarry (4-2, 4.12), sophomore Dan Gautieri (5-1, 2.00) and junior Pat Bet (1-2, 4.10). Sophomore LHP Ronnie Glenn (1-1, 4.42) has a team-high 15 relief appearances and eighth of Penn's nine saves. Senior RHP John Beasley (1-1, 1.80) has appeared in 14 games, followed by 11 games from freshman RHP Mitch Holtz (1-0, 2.21).
 
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 264 games. The Big Red won the first three games of last year's series. In Game 1, Tom D'Alessandro was 2-for-3 with a double and a two-run home run in a 3-0 victory. The Big Red then led by as many as eight runs in a 9-5 victory. Ben Swinford was 3-for-5 with a double and three RBIs, and starter Brian McAfee worked into the eighth inning. Connor Kaufmann then pitched a three-hit shutout in a 3-0 Game 3 victory before the Quakers avoided the sweep with a 4-3 win in the series finale. …
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, 144-114-2, Cornell has enjoyed success in the most recent meetings between the squads. In the last 38 meetings, the Big Red is 27-11 against the Quakers with just one series loss in the last 10 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.
 
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.
 
WELCOME ABOARD
Junior transfer Zach McCulley has made himself right at home on the Big Red pitching staff after stops at William & Mary and three junior colleges. The 6-foot-5 lefty has locked down a spot in the starting rotation for the Ivy League season and currently leads the starting staff with a 1.67 earned run average to go with a 3-1 record. He had a streak of 15.1 scoreless innings snapped Sunday when Columbia plated three unearned runs. McCulley hasn't surrendered an extra-base hit in his last 16.2 innings, dating back to a fifth-inning double by Yale's Jacob Hunter on April 1. McCulley ranks 32nd in the country in WHIP (0.90), 56th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.2), 59th in ERA (1.67) and 62nd in walks allowed per nine innings (1.39).
 
REMEMBER ME?
Junior OF Chris Cruz is back in the fold, playing his first 14 games of the season 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 23 strikeouts compared to just four walks over his first seven starts, which puts him among some of the nation's stingiest pitchers when it comes to issuing free passes. As of Sunday, McAfee ranked 13th among NCAA Division I pitchers in walks allowed per nine innings (0.87), 39th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.75) and 54th in WHIP (0.94). 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 is ranked 38th in the nation in stole bases per game (1.65) coming into this week. Ten players already have stolen bases for the Big Red, and five have stolen at least five bases. Sophomore JD Whetsel leads the team with 14 stolen bases, which ranks 70th 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 28 of the Big Red's 31 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 regular season with a nonleague game Tuesday, April 23 at Binghamton before a home-and-away doubleheader with Princeton the following weekend.