It's crunch time for the baseball team, which wraps up its regular season with a four-game series against Princeton this weekend. The first doubleheader is scheduled to start at noon Friday at the Tigers' Clarke Field, then the teams will travel to Hoy Field in Ithaca, N.Y. for the final doubleheader at noon Sunday.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Princeton at Cornell
GAMES 1 & 2: Friday, April 26, 2013 (at Clarke Field — Princeton, N.J.)
GAMES 3 & 4: Sunday, April 28, 2013 (at Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.)
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after the completion of the first game
WEBCAST (Friday only): www.goprincetontigers.com/liveEvents/liveEvents.dbml?SPID=4228&db_oem_id=10600
AUDIO (all games): www.ustream.tv/channel/cornellatbat
LIVE STATS (Friday only): http://sidearmstats.com/cornell/baseball
LIVE STATS (Sunday only): http://sidearmstats.com/cornell/baseball
2013 RECORDS: Cornell 21-15 (9-7 Ivy League); Princeton 12-26 (9-7 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Princeton leads, 139-86-2
LAST MEETING: Cornell won the finale of the 2012 series, 4-3 in 12 innings, to clinch the Gehrig Division title.
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
In its last game, the Big Red dropped a 6-5 nonleague decision to Binghamton on Tuesday. Junior Ryan Plantier was 2-for-3 with a three-run home run in the second inning. He leads the team with 23 RBIs. … Cornell won the last three games of a four-game set against Penn last weekend at Hoy Field, keeping alive the hopes of defending the team's Ivy League title. The Big Red trails Columbia by three games for the Lou Gehrig Division lead with four games remaining in the regular season. Standout pitching efforts by freshman Michael Byrne and sophomore Brian McAfee, then an eight-run outburst in the series finale fueled the three wins. … Byrne surrendered just two hits in eight innings of work in Saturday's 4-2 win in Game 2, an effort that would land him Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors. The freshman lefty, making his first career Ivy start, settled down after the game's leadoff hitter came around to score, no-hitting the Quakers for the next seven innings. … McAfee then tossed a four-hitter in Sunday's 3-1 victory in Game 1 for his first collegiate complete game. Junior Chris Cruz hit an inside-the-park three-run homer to highlight a five-run third inning in an 8-2 rout to close out the series. … Sophomore Kevin Tatum was 8-for-15 over the weekend with three doubles and five runs. With 11 hits over his last seven games, Tatum has raised his season batting average by 49 points (from .221 to .270). He was named the College Sports Madness Ivy League Player of the Week. … Sophomore JD Whetsel has the team lead with a .306 average, and he also leads the squad in runs (25), total bases (51), stolen bases (17) and on base percentage (.415). … Cruz now leads the team with three home runs and a .464 slugging percentage. Plantier has joined Tatum as the only other member of the squad with multiple home runs, with both of Tatum's roundtrippers and five of his 13 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 3.26 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 166-144-1 (.535).
 
ABOUT PRINCETON
The Tigers are 12-26 overall and 9-7 in the Ivy League, coming off an 8-6 loss to Rider on Wednesday. Princeton dropped three of its four games against Columbia last weekend, with the Lions outscoring the Tigers, 21-5. The one win was a five-hit shutout by junior RHP/1B Mike Ford, who is 5-0 with a 1.00 ERA and four complete games. Oppositing batters and hitting just .191 against him, and he has yielded just four extra-base hits in 54 innings of work. Ford also typically bats third, hitting .295 to go with a team-leading five home runs and 33 RBIs. … Junior CF Alec Keller, who typically leads off, leads the team with a .378 average, 30 runs and .437 on base percentage. He's second on the team with four homers. … Freshman 2B Danny Hoy is batting .333 with a team-leading 14 doubles and 12 stolen bases. The Tigers have stolen just 29 bases as a team. … The Tigers' rotation this weekend is expected to be senior RHP Zak Hermans (3-3, 2.01 with 49 Ks in 49.1 innings), senior RHP Kevin Link (1-4, 5.89), Ford and freshman RHP Cameron Mingo (0-4, 3.40). … Junior LHP Michael Fagan (1-4, 7.99) leads the team with 14 appearances out of the bullpen. Sophomore RHP Danny Thomson (1-2, 4.91) has made 12 appearances and has the Tigers' only save, and freshman RHP Luke Streiber (0-2, 9.16) has appeared 11 times. … Princeton is 2-12 against lefthanded starters and is 2-10 in one-run games. The Tigers have also not won a game this season when they trailed after six innings.
 
SERIES HISTORY vs. PRINCETON
The Tigers are the second-most frequent opponent for the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games pushing the total number of meetings between the squads to 231. The first clash came on May 19, 1888, with Princeton emerging with a 4-0 victory. The Big Red would have to wait until 1896 for its first victory over the Tigers, coming out on top of 12-10 score on a May 2 meeting in Ithaca. More recently, Princeton took three of four meetings last year, but Cornell's one win in the finale was significant. Ben Swinford hit a solo home run in the top of 12th inning, and Kellen Urbon surrendered just an unearned run in 6.1 innings of relief to lead the Big Red to a 4-3 victory and the Gehrig Division title.
 
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 sports a 1.69 earned run average to go with a 4-1 record. He had a streak of 15.1 scoreless innings snapped April 14 when Columbia plated three unearned runs. McCulley hasn't surrendered an extra-base hit in his last 21.2 innings, dating back to a fifth-inning double by Yale's Jacob Hunter on April 1. McCulley ranks 45th in the country in ERA (1.69) and 49th in walks allowed per nine innings (1.45).
 
BYRNE NOTICE
The Ivy League Rookie of the Year came from Cornell in 2012, and the Big Red has another good candidate in 2013 with freshman Michael Byrne. The left-handed pitcher has seen a variety of roles this season, including his first Ivy start Saturday vs. Penn. The result was in line with the rest of his season — Byrne was very nearly unhittable and earned Ivy League Player of the Week honors. After surrendering a pair of singles and a run in the first inning against the Quakers, Byrne no-hit Penn for the next seven innings and retired 16 straight batters. Through 10 appearances, he is allowing just 4.0 hits per nine innings. That number would rank second in the nation in that category, but Byrne is three innings shy of qualifying. He is now 2-2 with 1.00 ERA and an opponents' batting average of .143 for the season.
 
REMEMBER ME?
Junior OF Chris Cruz is back in the fold, playing his first 17 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. Despite all of the missed time, he still currently leads the team with three home runs.
 
CONTROL FREAK
Sophomore RHP Brian McAfee has 27 strikeouts compared to just six walks over his first eight starts, which puts him among some of the nation's stingiest pitchers when it comes to issuing free passes. McAfee ranked 20th among NCAA Division I pitchers in walks allowed per nine innings (1.12), 39th in WHIP (0.93) and 68th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (4.5). 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. That average of 1.35 walks per nine innings and 0.88 WHIP were both ranked 35th in the nation.
 
SPEED KILLS
Cornell is ranked 41st in the nation in stolen bases per game (1.60) coming into this week. Ten players already have stolen bases for the Big Red, five have stolen at least five bases and three have swiped at least 10 bags. Sophomore JD Whetsel leads the team with 17 stolen bases, which ranks 63rd 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 33 of the Big Red's 36 games, including the last seven 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
If Cornell and Columbia tie for the Gehrig Division title, a one-game tiebreaker would take place May 3, 4 or 5 at the Lions' Robertson Field at Satow Stadium. … If Cornell wins the Gehrig Division outright, it would advance to the best-of-three Ivy Championship Series against the Red Rolfe Division champion, either May 4-5 (if Dartmouth wins its division outright) or May 11-12 (if Dartmouth and Harvard need a one-game playoff to determine the winner).