LEWISBURG, Pa. — The baseball team will continues its season-opening travels this weekend with a four-game series at Bucknell. The series will stretch over three days, starting at 3:30 p.m. Friday. After a doubleheader commencing at noon Saturday, the finale is scheduled for noon Sunday.
 
SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Bucknell
FORMAT: Games 1, 3 and 4 are nine innings; Game 2 is seven innings
SITE: Depew Field — Lewisburg, Pa.
RECORDS: Cornell 3-3, Bucknell 6-9
SERIES RECORD: Bucknell leads, 26-16-1
AUDIO (Games 2, 3, & 4): http://www.bucknellbison.com/liveEvents/liveEvents.dbml?SPID=137625&DB_OEM_ID=32100&db_oem_id=32100
STATS: http://www.bucknellbison.com/liveStats/liveStats.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=32100&LIST_SPORT_KEY=M_BASEBALL
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Probable starters to be determined
GAME 1: 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 18
GAME 2: Noon, Saturday, March 19
GAME 3: *2:30 p.m., Saturday, March 19
GAME 4: Noon, Sunday, March 20 
Of note: Game 3 will start approximately 30 minutes after the completion of Game 2.
 
WHITHER THE WEATHER
This weekend's series was originally scheduled to feature dueling doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday, but the forecast for the latter day has spurred the teams to push the season opener to Friday afternoon in lieu of Sunday's twin bill.

ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell is coming off an impressive series victory at Wofford, which entered last weekend with a 10-4 record after posting a program-record 39 victories in 2015. Junior Cole Rutherford continued his season-opening onslaught, slugging three home runs among his four hits on the week to earn Ivy League Player of the Week honors. All of those homers came on the first day of the series. The first in a Game 1 loss, then the other two among a total of six by the Big Red in a 12-5 victory in the Saturday's night cap. Those six home runs in one game matches the Big Red's total for the entire 2015 season and breaks a program record for homers in a single game. Junior RHP Tim Willittes then worked into the seventh inning of Sunday's rubber game, earning Ivy Pitcher of the Week honors by locking down his first collegiate victory in a 6-2 win for the Big Red. … Cornell opened the season by winning one of three games March 5-6 against Northeastern in Florida. … Rutherford leads the team with a .350 average and has four of the Big Red's nine home runs and has accounted for 10 of the team's 23 RBI. Junior Tommy Wagner and sophomore Dale Wickham have matching .333 averages. … Cornell was 13-27 overall and 9-11 in the Ivy League last season. Underlying the overall record was a 5-14 record in one-run games. … In 2012, the Big Red won the program's first league title since 1977 and its first Ivy league title since the circuit began sponsoring baseball 20 years prior.
 
THE HEAD COACH
Dan Pepicelli is in his first season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball at Cornell University after helping lead Clemson to the NCAA tournament in all six years as the program's pitching coach and stints as head coach at St. John Fisher and Hartwick. Clemson's record was 231-149 (.608) in Pepicelli's six years with the program, including three seasons as the associate head coach, two more as the assistant head coach, and one as an assistant coach. He became the Tigers' first pitching coach to lead a staff to the College World Series in his first season with the squad, then led the pitching staff to a season earned-run average below 4.00 for four consecutive seasons from 2011-14. Pepicelli has more than 200 career victories as a head coach.
 
ABOUT BUCKNELL
The Bison are 5-9 after losing four of five games over the last five days at the RussMatt Invitational in Winter Haven, Fla. After being swept in a three-game set against Bradley, Bucknell rallied past Maine for a 6-3 win on Tuesday, then yielded four runs — all driven in via three triples — in the eighth and ninth innings to suffer a 6-4 loss to Dartmouth on Wednesday. … Graduate student Alex O'Neill leads the team with a .385 average in part-time duty, while juniors Danny Rafferty (.305) and Brett Smith (.302) are the two full-timers hitting above .300. Smith's nine RBI lead the team, and sophomore Mike Korchak has two of the Bison's seven home runs. … All four of the team's primary starters — junior Mike Castellani (LHP, 2-1, 3.18), senior Dan Keller (RHP, 0-1, 3.93), senior Andrew Andreychik (RHP, 0-2, 7.45) and freshman Jeff Gottesman (RHP, 0-2, 4.80)  — are lined up for this weekend, though probable starters will not be divulged until Friday. … Rafferty is an everyday outfielder but can switch to the mound to serve as closer. He has three of Bucknell's three saves to date.
 
SERIES HISTORY vs. BUCKNELL
The Big Red is 16-26-1 all-time against the Bison, including one win in a four-game series from March 21-22, 2015. Cornell won the opener of the set, 3-0, behind six shutout innings from Brian McAfee '15, with current junior RHP Paul Balestrieri working a scoreless seventh inning to record the save. Bucknell has won three of four games in its last three series against Cornell (2006, 2007, 2015). The last 21 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. Cornell is also due to return to Bucknell for a single game on April 20.
 
POWER SURGE
In just six games this season, the Big Red has already hit 50 percent more home runs than it had in the entire 2015 season. Six of those home runs came in the second game of last Saturday's doubleheader at Wofford — a program record.
 
BYRNE NOTICE
Senior LHP Michael has surrendered just one earned run in two starts this season, looking to regain his form from the 2013 and 2014 seasons. He has twice earned All-Ivy League accolades, garnering second-team honors in both his freshman and sophomore seasons. Though he struggled to an inflated ERA last season, he still led the team with 45 strikeouts. Cornell has two other returning All-Ivy winners — both senior OF Jordan Winawer (2014) and junior 3B Tommy Wagner (2015) have garnered honorable mention.
 
FOR STARTERS …
Of Cornell's 40 games last season, just 11 were started by players who return to the team this season. Senior LHP Michael Byrne has eight of those, while the other three were late-season outings by junior RHP Paul Balestrieri. The New Jersey product has made the full-time transition to the rotation after primarily serving as one of the team's best late-inning options over his first two years on East Hill. Junior RHP Tim Willittes is also in the starting ranks after missing the entirety of the 2015 season with an injury, and his first collegiate victory last week earned him Ivy League Pitcher of the Week honors.

UP NEXT
The Big Red makes its second trip of the year to Florida for five games in six nights against Central Florida (March 25-27) and Rollins (March 29-30) before returning to Ithaca, N.Y. for its home and Ivy League debut with doubleheaders against Harvard on April 2 and Dartmouth on April 3.