LEWISBURG, Pa. — The baseball team's long road of 14 straight games away from home to start the season wraps up this weekend with a four-game series at Bucknell. The Big Red is scheduled to take on the Bison in a pair of doubleheaders starting at noon on both Saturday and Sunday.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Bucknell
GAMES 1-2: Saturday, March 21, 2014
GAMES 3-4: Sunday, March 22, 2014
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after completion of first game each day
SITE: Depew Field; Lewisburg, Pa.
RECORDS: Cornell 2-8, Bucknell 9-6
SERIES RECORD: Bucknell leads, 23-15-1
LIVE STATS: BucknellBison.com
 
ABOUT THE BIG RED
Underlying Cornell's 2-8 record are five losses by one-run deficits — including last Friday's 5-4 loss in 12 innings to LIU-Brooklyn at the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational. It was the first of four games for the Big Red at the event, with an 8-6 victory over Bowling Green, a 13-9 loss to Maine and a 7-2 loss to Huntington wrapping up the weekend. … Senior INF Kevin Tatum had six hits over the four games to move into the team lead with a .281 batting average. He also has a team-high six walks, and his five RBIs are tied for second on the team behind senior INF/OF Dan Morris' six. Morris is batting .270 and his four doubles leads the team. Senior 1B/DH Spencer Scorza had five hits last weekend and is tied for the team lead with 10 hits. … Senior RHP Brian McAfee (1-1, 1.50) earned the victory against Bowling Green, surrendering one run over six innings. He entered the game as the reigning Ivy League Pitcher of the Week after his impressive March 1 performance against then-undefeated Virginia, one of the nation's top-ranked teams. He tossed seven scoreless innings without issuing any walks, with no Virginia runners advancing past second base as Cornell held the lead into the eighth inning. … Senior LHP Nick Busto (1-1, 3.00) had a no-hitter through 4.2 innings against Huntington, but the Foresters struck for three runs before Busto induced an inning-ending out. Sophomore Paul Balestrieri (0-0, 1.86) leads the team with five relief appearances, and he earned the season's first save against Bowling Green. … The Big Red is batting .210 in the early going, but the team's pitching staff has a 2.69 earned-run average. Despite being six games under .500 entering this weekend, Cornell's staff ERA is better than its opponents' (2.96).
 
LOOKING BACK
Cornell was 18-21 overall and 9-11 in Ivy League play for the 2014 season. Senior 1B/DH Ryan Karl was named an All-Ivy League First Team selection last year, which was his first with the Big Red since he transferred from Louisville (via Catawba Valley Community College). He led the team with a .280 average, nine home runs, 32 RBIs and a .552 slugging percentage. … Despite losing Brent Jones to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the fourth round of the MLB Draft last summer, the Big Red returns an extremely strong pitching staff, which has posted a sub-4.00 earned-run average in each of the last three seasons. Junior LHP Michael Byrne (0-2, 2.89) is a two-time All-Ivy Second Team pick, with a 3-4 record, 1.86 ERA and team-high 49 strikeouts last season. Senior RHP Kellen Urbon (2012 First Team), senior RHP Brian McAfee (2012 Second Team) and senior LHP Zach McCulley (2013 Honorable Mention) are other former All-Ivy picks.
 
THE HEAD COACH
In his seventh season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball at Cornell University, Bill Walkenbach has 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 eighth season as a collegiate head coach, Walkenbach has a career record of 188-178-1 (.514).
 
ABOUT BUCKNELL
The Bison are the defending Patriot League champions, after tying a school record with 31 victories in 2014. One of those victories was against Liberty in an NCAA Regional in Charlottesville, Va. … Bucknell is 9-6 after suffering a 9-2 loss Tuesday against Saint Joseph's in their home opener. The Bison were also at the RussMatt tournament, posting the same 1-2 record as the Big Red in a three-game stretch against LIU-Brooklyn, Bowling Green and Maine. Bucknell wrapped up its Florida trip with a two-game sweep of Butler. It also had a three-game sweep of VCU in February. … Senior 2B/OF Joe Ogren leads the team with a .424 batting average, four home runs and 17 RBIs and three stolen bases. Junior OF Anthony Gingerelli has a team-high 26 hits to post a .377 average. The Bison are batting .285 as a team through 15 games. … Bucknell has used five starting pitchers, and with the four most likely to oppose Cornell being senior RHP Bryson Hough (2-1, 3.18), senior LHP Xavier Hammond (2-0, 3.41), junior RHP Andrew Andreychik (1-2, 5.56) and senior RHP Jordan Holtz (1-0, 3.45). Hough has issued just four walks in 28.1 innings, Hammond is far and away the team leader in strikeouts with 32 in 29 innings. Senior RHP Tucker Rekucki (0-2, 2.70, SV) has a team-high eight appearances out of the bullpen, and sophomore LHP Danny Rafferty (0-0, 0.00) has two saves with nine strikeouts and no walks in six innings of work.
 
SERIES HISTORY vs. BUCKNELL
The Big Red is 15-23-1 all-time against the Bison, with the teams' last meetings coming in a four-game series to kick off Cornell's 2007 season. Bucknell won three of those games, just as it did in a similar series the year before. The last 18 games of the series have been played at Bucknell, with the Bison's last visit to Ithaca coming in the form of the Big Red's doubleheader sweep on April 27, 1999.
 
OPPORTUNISTIC WINAWER
Junior OF Jordan Winawer started the final 15 games at a corner outfield position for the Big Red – his first collegiate starts following an injury-washed 2013 season. To say Winawer made the most of his opportunity would be putting it lightly. He was the Big Red's best hitter over that stretch, leading the squad with a .436 batting average. For his efforts, he was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week on March 15, 2014. He also had an eight-game hitting streak in April and later earned All-Ivy League Honorable Mention.
 
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 junior, the left-handed pitcher earned All-Ivy League Second Team honors in each of the last two seasons. He made 11 appearances as a sophomore, including three late-season starts, posting a 3-2 record with a 1.09 ERA, two saves, and an impressive .160 opponents' batting average. Byrne didn't surrender an earned run through his first three starts last season and eventually led the team with a 1.86 ERA and 49 strikeouts.
 
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. Three are still on the team — Kellen Urbon (unanimous First Team selection; Ivy Rookie of the Year), Brian McAfee (Second Team) and Kevin Tatum (Honorable Mention).
 
URBON LEGEND
Senior 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, then made seven appearances last season.
 
UP NEXT
The Big Red will dust off Hoy Field in its final non-league tuneup before league play on Tuesday, March 24, when it welcomes Albany to town for a doubleheader at 2 p.m. Cornell then begins its Ivy League slate with noon doubleheaders Saturday, March 28 against Yale and Sunday, March 29 against Brown. The six-game home stand is scheduled to be Cornell's longest of the season.