NEW YORK — The baseball team will look to get back into the Ivy League Lou Gehrig Division pennant race when it travels to Columbia to take on the defending champions in a four-game series on Saturday and Sunday. The games will be broadcast on the Ivy League Digital Network.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Columbia
FORMAT: Seven-inning first game; nine-inning second game (both days)
SITE: Robertson Field at Satow Stadium – New York
GAMES 1 & 2: Saturday, April 18, 2015
GAMES 3 & 4: Sunday, April 19, 2015
TIME: First game at noon; second game approximately 30 minutes after the completion of the first game
RECORDS: Cornell 9-21 (6-6 Ivy League); Columbia 19-12 (10-2 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 124-103
LAST MEETING: Columbia swept a four-game series April 19-20, 2014 in Ithaca, N.Y. (1-0, 8-0, 2-0, 8-4)
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
AUDIO: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: GoColumbiaLions.com
 
IN THE REARVIEW
Cornell won once in a four-game divisional series against Penn last weekend at Hoy Field. The Quakers swept Saturday's games, 13-8 and 9-2, before the Big Red turned it on Sunday. Senior RHP Kellen Urbon (2-2, 1.21) delivered a three-hit shutout in the series' third game, taking a no-hitter into the fifth inning and fanning five to spur the Big Red to a 2-0 victory. Urbon was subsequently named the Ivy League's Pitcher of the Week. Cornell then took an early lead Sunday's finale, but eventually dropped a 5-4 decision to fall four games behind Penn and Columbia in the Ivy League's Lou Gehrig Division standings with eight games to play. … Siena defeated Cornell, 9-2, in a non-league game Tuesday in metro Albany. Freshman Dale Wickham drove in both Big Red runs with a single with the bases loaded in the eighth inning. That gives him four RBIs in his last three games.
 
THE OFFENSE
Cornell is batting .267 in Ivy League play and .240 overall this season. The offense is generally trending upward — the Big Red had just 47 runs its first 14 games (3.36/game), then scored 31 in its first four Ivy games (7.75/game). Senior 2B/3B Kevin Tatum leads the team with a .340 average and 23 RBIs. He had an eight-game hitting streak halted Tuesday at Siena, but he has hits in 18 of his last 20 games. He also has one of the team's four home runs this season, with senior 1B/DH Spencer Scorza (.261, 17 RBIs), sophomore UTL Jamie Smith and freshman OF Pierre Le Dorze (.308 in 9 games) providing the others. … Senior 2B/OF Dan Morris has a team-high 10 doubles to go with his .304 average. His 16 RBIs rank third on the team. … Senior CF JD Whetsel has a team-high six stolen bases in just 16 games since missing the first month of the season due to injury.
 
THE PITCHING
Cornell has the Ivy League's top two pitchers, by measure of earned-run average. Senior RHP Kellen Urbon's 1.21 ERA not only leads the Ancient Eight, but it ranks 10th in the nation among qualifiying hurlers. Senior RHP Brian McAfee (4-1, 1.67) has just four walks in his seven starts, which has helped him rank 15th in the nation in WHIP (0.86) and 16th in walks allowed per nine innings (0.84). … Sophomore RHP Paul Balestrieri (0-0, 2.88) has four saves and worked 4.1 innings of scoreless relief last Sunday, his team-high 12th appearance. Sophomore RHP Peter Lannoo (0-0, 2.61) has been a pleasant surprise, having just joined the program as a walk-on this season. He has 10 strikeouts and one walk over 10.1 innings in six relief appearances. … As a staff, Cornell had a 2.98 ERA as of March 30, but a stretch of six games in four days forced the Big Red to use a piecemeal pitching staff in losses of 23-7 to Richmond and 11-5 to Towson last week. The Big Red's ERA has since ballooned to a misleading 5.29.
 
MAC IS BACK
Senior RHP Brian McAfee (4-1, 1.67) has made a huge impact in his return after missing nearly all of last season with an injury. McAfee was named the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on April 7 after tossing a two-hit shutout the previous Saturday at Dartmouth, spurring the Big Red to a 1-0 victory. It was the second time this season he won the award. The first was early in the season when he worked seven scoreless innings without issuing any walks against then-No. 1 Virginia. No Virginia runners advanced past second base as McAfee established himself as one of the Ivy League's top professional prospects in front of several scouts that day. He has issued no walks in five of his seven starts this year.
 
URBON LEGEND
Senior RHP Kellen Urbon (2-2, 1.21) 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. He has been solid as a starter this season, having surrendered just five earned runs in seven starts.
 
BYRNE NOTICE
Junior LHP Michael Byrne (0-6, 7.62) had a career-high 11 strikeouts in a March 22 game at Bucknell. He set down the Bison 1-2-3 in five of his six innings and became the first Big Red pitcher to record 11 strikeouts since Corey Pappel on April 29, 2009 in a divisional playoff game against Princeton. He was also the first Big Red pitcher to reach double digits in strikeouts since senior Brian McAfee's career-high 10 Ks on March 11, 2012 at George Washington. Byrne, a two-time All-Ivy League Second Team honoree, led the team with a 1.86 ERA and 49 strikeouts last season.
 
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 195-191-1 (.505).
 
ABOUT COLUMBIA
The Lions have won 16 of their last 19 games, with one of those losses coming on Wednesday at Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights won that game, 7-4, while holding the Lions to six hits. Columbia won the final three games of a four-game set last weekend at Princeton, leaving it with a 10-2 mark in Ivy League play and tied with Penn atop the Gehrig Division standings. That's how the two teams finished last season, with Columbia going on to win the division tiebreaker and Ivy Championship Series against Dartmouth. … Columbia is batting .286 as a team and has 21 home runs. Senior OF/DH Joe Falcone leads the squad with a .339 average, 14 doubles and 28 RBIs. His five home runs are tied for the team lead with junior 1B Nick Maguire. Senior CF Jordan Serena is batting .328 and is a perfect 15-for-15 in stolen-base attempts. Senior RF Gus Craig is batting .320 with a team-best 26 runs and 19 RBIs. Sophomore 2B/SS Will Savage, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year, is batting .288 and has eight stolen bases. … The Lions have been using a weekend rotation of Junior RHP George Thanopoulos (2-3, 3.27), junior RHP Adam Cline (2-0, 3.67), junior RHP Kevin Roy (3-2, 3.22) and senior LHP Mike Weisman (3-1, 2.97). Cline has fanned 38 in just 34.1 innings of work, Weisman has issued just five walks in 33.1 innings and Roy has issued 24 walks in 36.1 innings — though opponents are batting just .211 off him. Freshman RHP Bryce Barr (1-0, 2.45) has a team-high 12 appearances, while junior RHP Matt Robinson (1-0, 2.45), freshman RHP Harrisen Egly (1-1, 3.95) and sophomore LHP Ryan Marks (2-2, 7.50) have all made 10 appearances apiece. Columbia's team ERA is 4.20.
 
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 231 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 124-103 lead in the all-time series, though Columbia won swept the four-game 2014 series in Ithaca. … This is the 23rd season of Ivy League baseball and its scheduling format of having divisional opponents play each four times each year. Over that span, only one two sweeps have occurred in the Cornell-Columbia series— none at the Lions' home field.
 
ON THE CUSP
Underlying Cornell's 9-20 overall record is a 3-10 record in games decided by one run. By March 30, Cornell had an ERA of nearly a full run lower than its opposition, despite sitting six games under .500. The Big Red yielded 30 unearned runs in its first 18 games.
 
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.
 
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).
 
UP NEXT
The Big Red continues its road-heavy stretch with a non-league trip to Binghamton at 4 p.m. Wednesday before two more Ivy League games Friday, April 24 at Princeton. The Big Red and Tigers will then descend on Hoy Field in Ithaca, N.Y. for the final two games of the series at noon Sunday, April 26.