VESTAL, N.Y. — Cornell plays its final non-league game of the season, making the short jaunt for its first game on the new artificial surface and under the new lights at Binghamton's Baseball Complex. The game will be broadcast by AmericaEast.com.

GAME INFORMATION
Cornell at Binghamton
4 p.m. Wednesday, April 26
SITE: Baseball Complex — Vestal, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 18-15, 7-9 Ivy League; Binghamton 20-7, 9-2 America East
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads Binghamton, 21-15
VIDEO: AmericaEast.com
STATS: BUBearcats.com
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Probable starters
Cornell (RHP Scott Soltis, 1-1, 6.10)   •   Binghamton (RHP Ben Anderson, 1-1, 5.40)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Binghamton game notes

The Big Red, In Brief:
•   In its second season under the guidance of Dan Pepicelli, the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball, Cornell is 18-15 overall and 7-9 in the Ivy League and has easily surpassed its win total from last season. Despite being decimated by injuries, the Big Red was in Lou Gehrig Division contention up until losing three of four over the weekend at Hoy Field against front-running Penn.
•   Cornell is tabbed 118th in the Ratings Percentage Index — which is still highest among Lou Gehrig Division teams and third overall in the Ivy League.

Breaking Down The Penn Series:
•   In broad strokes, a matchup of the division's top two teams boiled down to a showdown between the Ivy League's best offense against the league's best pitching staff — and the latter ultimately prevailed. Offense proved to be at a premium in the four-game set at Hoy Field, with Penn winning three of four games. Those results, couple with Columbia's sweep of Princeton, eliminated Cornell from postseason contention.
•   The Quakers won Saturday's opener, 5-0, behind a shutout and 10 strikeouts from Jake Cousins. Tim Willittes tossed a complete game for the Big Red.
•   Justin Lewis starred in the second game, delivering Cornell's first nine-inning shutout since 2000 in a 2-0 victory. He needed just 1 hour, 40 minutes to mow through the Quakers' lineup while yielding five hits and no walks while fanning six. The only Penn runner to advance past first base came on a first-inning double. Cornell scored both of its runs in the first inning on RBI singles from Tommy Wagner and Will Simoneit.
•   The Big Red outhit the Quakers and Tommy Morris pitched beautifully while working into the seventh inning of Sunday's opener, but the first batter faced after his departure hit a three-run home run to blow open a 4-0 win for Penn.
•   Ellis Bitar hit a first-inning home run and an RBI single two innings later in the finale, but Penn won 3-2 after scoring a single run in the top of the seventh and escaping a jam with two runners in scoring position and no out in the bottom of the frame.

On Offense:
•   The Big Red bats are hitting at a .289 clip, which ranks 63rd in the nation and second-highest in the Ivy League. Junior Dale Wickham leads with a .383 average, though he has missed the last 12 games due to injury.
•   Junior Ryan Krainz has a .348 average (eighth in the Ivy) with the team lead in stolen bases (seven) and a strong .460 on base percentage that ranks fourth in the league. He has worked 24 walks against just 13 strikeouts.
•   Senior Tommy Wagner (.298) is batting .432 over the last 10 games and had a 13-game hitting streak snapped over the weekend. He also started the season on a 12-game hitting streak and has led the team in batting in each of the last two seasons.
•   Senior Cole Rutherford (.307) leads the team with seven home runs and 32 RBI, surpassing his team-high totals from those categories last year (6 HR, 26 RBI). He is the older brother of Blake Rutherford, a 2017 first-round draft pick of the New York Yankees.
•   Sophomore Will Simoneit (.306) has four home runs, 20 RBI and a .597 slugging percentage in just 62 at-bats. He has started the last 14 games, primarily at catcher.

On The Mound:
•   Senior Scott Soltis (RHP, 1-1, 6.10) is slated to make his fourth start of the season. His last start came against Binghamton on April 12, where he tossed three innings, yielding two hits and one earned run while fanning three.
•   Senior Peter Lannoo (RHP, 0-0, 3.93, 8 SV) leads the team with 14 relief outings and leads the Ivy League in saves. He is now tied for second on the program's all-time list for saves in a single season, just off the mark held by Kellen Urbon from the 2012 season. Lannoo has not allowed any of his 12 inherited runners to score this year.
•   The bullpen has been a strength for the Big Red this season, with senior Jamie Flynn (RHP, 1-0, 0.59) having only yielded his first earned run of the season in his 10th appearance. Senior Matt Horton (LHP, 2-1, 2.19) also started his season with seven scoreless appearances. In Horton's career, he's allowed just five of 34 inherited runners to score.
•   Seniors Paul Balestrieri and Tim Willittes, and juniors Justin Lewis and Tommy Morris have comprised the Big Red's weekend rotation in recent weeks, making them unlikely to pitch much — if at all — against Binghamton.

About Binghamton:
•   The Bearcats are 20-7 after sweeping three games with Maine over the weekend. Binghamton has won seven straight since being defeated by Cornell on April 12. The Bearcats remain the conference's highest-ranked team in the Ratings Percentage Index (45th).
•   The offense is batting .284, with Paul Rufo (.347) and Justin Yurchak (.327) leading the way. Yurchak has drawn 23 walks against just nine strikeouts for a team-best .456 on base percentage. Brendan Skidmore leads the team with 20 RBI and is tied for Darian Herncane for the team lead in home runs with three.
•   The team's pitching staff has a 2.99 ERA and has issued just 76 walks through 234.2 innings, with its weekend starters combining for a 2.31 ERA.
•   Ben Anderson (RHP, 1-1, 5.40) is scheduled to make his second start. Five of his seven outings to date have been scoreless, and all of them have lasted two or fewer innings.
•   Dylan Stock (RHP, 1-0, 1.59, 5 SV) leads the team in relief appearances and has half of the team's saves. Joe Orlando (RHP, 3-0, 2.88) and Cal Lawrence (RHP, 0-0, 4.00) have each made eight relief appearances.

Series History vs. Binghamton:
•   Cornell holds a 21-15 lead in the all-time series after scoring five unanswered runs for a 6-4 victory April 12 at Hoy Field.
•   Binghamton built a 4-1 lead in the top of the sixth behind a pair of home runs and four solid innings from starter Rob Brown. The Big Red scored once in the sixth, then tied it in the seventh before Will Simoneit's two-run homer in the eighth put the home side ahead for good.
•   Matt Horton earned the win with a quiet eighth inning, and Peter Lannoo locked down the save in the ninth.
•   The teams first met in 1984, with the Big Red sweeping a doubleheader at Binghamton's home site in Vestal, N.Y.

Spring Break Bonanza:
•   Making use of its Spring Break, Cornell played a couple mid-week games in Maryland earlier this month — including a historic 27-14 thrashing of Towson on April 5. The offensive output set a modern-era program record for runs in a single game, and Trey Baur also set a program record for hits in a single game, going 6-for-7.
•   Will Simoneit and Tommy Wagner both hit grand slams against Towson, the first for the Big Red since Ryan Karl hit one on March 26, 2014. Simoneit, Wagner and Baur each had five RBI in the game.

Proceed With Caution:
•   Junior Ellis Bitar has once again been named to the Johnny Bench Award watch list season after being the only Ivy League catcher to appear on the 2016 watch list. The award is given annually to the best catcher in Division I, and Bitar proved his wares last year by batting .288 and throwing out 14 prospective base-stealers — the most among Ivy catchers. Interestingly enough, Johnny Bench once played at Cornell's Hoy Field as a member of the International League's Buffalo Bisons in an exhibition against the Big Red on May 25, 1967.

The Route 96 Connection:
•   Two of the Big Red's top hitters are not only typically near each other in the batting order, they're also from the same town about a 90-minute drive northwest of campus. Senior Tommy Wagner and junior Dale Wickham both hail from Victor, near Rochester, where they played for a perennial high school power which captured the Class AA state title in 2014 (Wickham's senior year).

Making History:
•   Varsity baseball at Cornell started in 1869, so program firsts are few and far between two centuries later — but junior Dale Wickham delivered a big one last year. On May 1 at Princeton, Wickham became the first Big Red player to hit three home runs in a game. To make the feat even more impressive, he did it in his only three at-bats of a seven-inning game to open a doubleheader against the Ivy League champion.

Up Next:
•   Cornell wraps up its season this weekend with a four-game series against Princeton. The teams start off with a noon Friday doubleheader at Princeton before shifting back to Ithaca for a noon Sunday doubleheader at Hoy Field.