ITHACA, N.Y. – The baseball team will play its first Lou Gehrig Division home games of the spring this weekend when defending Ivy League champion Columbia visits Hoy Field for noon doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday.

SERIES INFORMATION
Columbia at Cornell
SITE: Hoy Field – Ithaca, N.Y.
GAMES 1 & 2: Saturday, April 19, 2014
GAMES 3 & 4: Sunday, April 20, 2014
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after the completion of the first game
RECORDS: Cornell 15-15 (6-6 Ivy League); Columbia 17-15 (9-3 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 124-99
LAST MEETING: Columbia won three of four April 13-14, 2013 in New York (1-8L, 0-5L, 5-4W, 2-5L)
WEBCAST: Ivy League Digital Network
AUDIO: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: CornellBigRed.com
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell enters this weekend after dropping the final three games of a four-game series last weekend at Lou Gehrig Division-leading Penn, followed by a 7-0 shutout at the hands of Binghamton on Thursday. The Big Red routed the Quakers in the series opener, 9-0, behind six shutout innings from starter Michael Byrne and eight runs over the final three innings. Matt Hall was 3-for-4 with his sixth double of the season, and junior 1B/OF Ryan Karl, senior 1B Ryan Plantier and freshman 3B Tommy Wagner drove in two runs apiece. Byrne fanned eight while yielded just two walks and four hits over his six innings of work. No Penn runners advanced past second base in the game, but the Quakers responded with a 11-2 victory in the nightcap, followed by 4-2 and 9-2 victories Sunday. Cornell then came up empty against Binghamton in an add-on game Thursday.  … Karl leads the team with a .291 batting average, nine doubles, six home runs, 25 RBI and .555 slugging percentage. … Junior CF JD Whetsel, who had an 11-game hitting streak broken earlier this month, is batting .286 exclusively from the leadoff spot. He has a team-high 19 walks and 13 stolen bases, one ahead of senior SS Tom D'Alessandro's 12. Whetsel has reached base safely in 29 of 30 games this season… Junior C Matt Hall is batting .278 with just six strikeouts in 78 plate appearances. He is also the Big Red's leading hitter in Ivy play with a .370 average. … The Big Red's pitching staff has a strong 3.57 earned run average. The staff posted a 3.13 ERA last season, which was the best the program had seen since its 2.25 ERA in 1973. … The Big Red has lost just two of its nine series so far this year. It started the year by taking two of three against Navy, then it won the final three games of a four-game set at George Washington before winning two of three at James Madison. After being swept by Sacred Heart, Cornell split doubleheaders with Dartmouth, Harvard, George Mason and Yale. The Big Red then swept Brown on April 6 and defeated Binghamton on April 9 before losing three of four to Penn last weekend.
 
THE HEAD COACH
In his sixth season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball at Cornell University, Bill Walkenbach brought the Big Red into the spotlight in 2012 with the program's first league title since 1977 and its first Ivy League title since the circuit added baseball 20 years prior. 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 ninth season as a collegiate head coach, Walkenbach has a career record of 183-163-1 (.529).
 
ABOUT COLUMBIA
The Lions are on a nine-game winning streak, including Wednesday's 11-4 win against St. John's and last weekend's four-game sweep of Princeton at Robertson Field. The hot streak leaves Columbia just two games behind Penn in the Lou Gehrig Division standings, and three games ahead of third-place Cornell. … Freshman INF Will Savage leads the team with a .341 average. Sophomore INF Nick Maguire (.323) and junior INF Jordan Serena (.304) are also hitting north of .300. Serena, who leads the team with 17 stolen bases, is also tied with junior INF David Vandercook for the team lead with nine doubles. Vandercook also has a team-high three home runs and 26 RBI – including 18 in Ivy League play. The Lions as a team have 44 steals. … Columbia's probable rotation this weekend includes senior LHP David Speer (3-2, 2.94, 3 CG, SHO) in Saturday's first game. He has an impressive 39:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 49 innings of work. Sophomore RHP George Thanopoulos (4-0, 2.70) Is scheduled to start Saturday's second game. Senior RHP Joey Donino (1-3, 5.01) is then slated to start Sunday's first game, followed by sophomore RHP Kevin Roy (3-3, 4.26). … Junior LHP Mike Weisman (1-0, 2.40) leads the bullpen with 11 appearances, one ahead of senior RHP Zack Tax (1-2, 1.76). Sophomore LHP Thomas Crispi (3-1, 6.04) has 27 strikeouts in 25.1 among nine appearances.
 
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 227 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 holds a 124-99 lead in the all-time series, though Columbia won three of four games in the 2013 series in New York. The Big Red's victory in the third game came in 10 innings, with then-freshman Eliot Lowell hitting an RBI single to plate the go-ahead run. Reliever Matt Horton earned the save by getting two swinging strikeouts with the tying run on third base. … This is the 22nd 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.
 
OPPORTUNISTIC WINAWER
Sophomore Jordan Winawer has started the last six games at a corner outfield position for the Big Red – his first collegiate starts following an injury-washed 2013 season. To say Winawer has made the most of his opportunity is putting it lightly. He was the Big Red's best hitter last week, going 9-for-14 with a double, three runs scored, and two RBIs. For his efforts, he was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week on Tuesday. He is the first Cornell player to earn the honor since Michael Byrne did so last April – also following a four-game series against Penn. Winawer added two hits against Binghamton on Thursday to run his hitting streak to seven games – the longest current streak on the team.
 
HONOR ROLL
The Big Red had back-to-back Ivy League Players of the Week for the first time since 2001 when senior SS Tom D'Alessandro received the honor March 18 and junior 1B/OF Ryan Karl garnered the award March 25. D'Alessandro's selection was buoyed by a program-record six stolen bases in one game against George Washington. Karl was then 8-for-15 with two doubles and four home runs in the three-game series at James Madison. His last home run was a grand slam with two outs in the top of the ninth to send the series finale to extra innings, which the Big Red won, 14-8. The last time the Big Red had consecutive Ivy League Players of the Week was when Erik Rico won the honor on consecutive weeks in 2001.
 
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Cornell was consistently in the Top 50 in the nation last season in stolen bases, finishing up at 1.55 steals per game. While The Big Red is slightly off that pace this season, currently ranking 111th in the nation at 1.10 steals per game as of Monday, the squad's one-two punch at the top of the lineup has wreaked plenty of havoc on the base paths this season. Senior SS Tom D'Alessandro is second on the team with 12 stolen bases, including a program-record six in a March 9 victory at George Washington. The Big Red had nine steals in that final game against GW, which was just one shy of a program record 10 set in 1952 against a team from nearby Sampson Air Force Base. Junior leadoff hitter JD Whetsel leads the way with 13 stolen bases after leading the team with 19 last season en route to All-Ivy Second Team honors. Whetsel has reached base in 29 of 30 games this season and had an 11-game hitting streak at one point.
 
BYRNE NOTICE
The Ivy League Rookie of the Year came from Cornell in 2012 (Kellen Urbon), and the Big Red had another good candidate in 2013 with Michael Byrne. Now a sophomore, the left-handed pitcher earned All-Ivy League Second Team honors after seeing a variety of roles last season. With 11 appearances, including three late-season starts, Byrne was 3-2 with a 1.09 ERA, two saves, and an impressive .160 opponents' batting average. Byrne didn't surrender an earned run through three appearances this season before Sacred Heart finally broke through against him March 22. He is currently 3-2 with a 1.33 ERA following his six innings of shutout ball Saturday at Penn. Byrne hasn't surrendered an earned run in his last 14 innings of work. Byrne's 0.48 ERA in Ivy games ranks second behind Yale's Chris Lanham (0.44).
 
JONESIN' FOR A BREAKTHROUGH
Junior RHP Brent Jones generated quite a buzz during the offseason, throwing 96 mph during the team's Scout Day during the fall. Jones was later tabbed at the 95^th-best junior in college baseball, according to Perfect Game USA. He made nine appearances (seven starts) last season for the Big Red, posting a 4-1 record and 3.47 ERA. He is 2-2 with a 2.80 ERA and a team-best 34 strikeouts in 35.1 innings through a team-high seven starts this season.
 
HORTON OR HOUDINI?
Sophomore LHP Matt Horton has proven to be quite the escape artist in his two years coming out of the Big Red bullpen. Horton, who notched his first save of the season Sunday at Brown, stranded all 10 runners he inherited during his freshman season. Just two of 10 inherited runners have scored against Horton this season, giving him a success rate of 90 percent for stranding inherited runners over his collegiate career entering this weekend.
 
WELCOME ABOARD
Senior LHP Zach McCulley made himself right at home on the Big Red pitching staff last season after stops at William & Mary and three junior colleges. The 6-foot-5 lefty locked down a spot in the starting rotation for the Ivy League season and finished the season with a sparkling 1.70 ERA to go with a 4-2 record and just four extra-base hits surrendered in 42.1 innings of work.
 
NOT FAR REMOVED FROM A LITTLE HISTORY
Cornell still has plenty of pieces in place from a special 2012 season. 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 RHPs Connor Kaufmann and Kellen Urbon, who are both still with the team.
 
REMEMBER ME?
Despite missing half the season with an injury, senior RF Chris Cruz led the Big Red in home runs last season with four. But that number is hardly an indication of what the slugger is capable of. 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. He now owns the program's career record with 24 home runs after smashing three home runs earlier this month. His five home runs rank second on the team behind six from junior 1B/OF Ryan Karl, and Cruz's 22 RBI are just three behind Karl's team-leading 25.
 
URBON LEGEND
Junior RHP Kellen Urbon made quite a statement in his 21 appearances as a freshman. 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 had 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. Urbon missed the bulk of the 2013 season due to injury.
 
UNHITTABLE
Senior 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. He missed the bulk of the 2013 season due to injury.
 
UP NEXT
The Big Red will wrap up the home portion of its schedule next week, starting with a non-league game against Binghamton at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Hoy Field. Cornell will then hold its annual Senior Day during a noon doubleheader on Friday, April 25 against Princeton.