BRONX, N.Y. —  The baseball team will look for its first victories of the season when it travels to New York for a three-game weekend series against Fordham.

SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Fordham
SITE: Houlihan Park — Bronx, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 0-6, Fordham 8-5-1
SERIES RECORDS: Cornell leads, 11-5
AUDIO: FordhamSports.com
STATS: FordhamSports.com
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Probable starters
Game 1: Noon Saturday, March 17   •   Cornell (Willittes, RHP, 0-2, 10.45)   •   Fordham (Greenberg, RHP, 2-0, 1.10)
Game 2: ~3 p.m. Saturday, March 17   •   Cornell (Urbon, RHP, 0-1, 6.52)   •   Fordham (Knehr, RHP, 2-1, 3.32)
Game 3: Noon Sunday, March 18   •   Cornell (Fernandez, LHP, 0-2, 18.00)   •   Fordham (DiMeglio, RHP, 1-0, 5.27)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Fordham game notes (coming soon)

Big Red Rewind:
   Cornell continues its stretch of nine straight road games to start the year, having been swept in three-game sets at Texas A&M and at Duke to start the year. 
•   The Big Red went toe-to-toe with the Aggies in the opener, pushing the tying run into scoring position in the ninth inning before ultimately suffering a 3-2 loss. Texas A&M followed that up with a 22-0 rout in the night cap of the Friday doubleheader, then won the finale, 8-2, on Saturday.
•   Duke never trailed in three games in North Carolina, scoring in the first inning of each  contest and limiting the Big Red to 14 hits in the series. 
•   Kyle Gallagher had two hits in each of the first two games to push his season-opening hitting streak to five games before that run was snapped in the series finale. Cornell had just two hits in its last game.

The Year That Was:
•   Cornell was 21-17 overall last season with a 9-11 record in the Ivy League, good for a third-place finish in the final year of the Ivy League's Lou Gehrig Division. It represented a seven-win improvement for the squad in its second year under the guidance of Dan Pepicelli, the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball.
•   In its second season while Pepicelli at the helm, Cornell recorded its first winning season since 2013 and just its fourth winning season since 1991. The Big Red also 
improved its Ivy League record by two victories over the year prior.
•   Associate Head Coach Tom Ford returns for his 26th season with the Big Red, while Frank Hager '12 remains assistant coach and recruiting coordinator in his third season on staff. David Anderson joins the Big Red as a volunteer assistant coach.

On Offense:
•   Against especially challenging competition, Cornell's bats are off to a slow start with a .142 average. Senior Kyle Gallagher leads the way with a .333 average and a pair of doubles, while senior Ellis Bitar has the team's lone home run to date. 
•   The Big Red led the Ivy League last year with a .295 average — its best since 2009 and 42th-best in the country. Six of the returning batters hit .284 or better last year.
•   Senior Dale Wickham batted a gaudy .406 with 12 doubles in just 25 games, but he missed 13 games due to injury during the heart of the Ivy League schedule. Had he kept pace and had enough at-bats to qualify, he would have finished fourth in the nation in batting average.
•   Senior Ryan Krainz batted .369 with a team-high 28 walks against just 16 strikeouts as the team's primary lead-off hitter. The junior college transfer had a .478 on base percentage that ranked 16th in the country, and he also led the team with seven steals. He was just the program's second All-Ivy League first team selection in the last six years.
•   After sitting out his freshman year while rehabilitating an injury, junior Will Simoneit made quite a splash in his collegiate debut last year. He was named to the All-Ivy League second team after batting .317 with five home runs, 28 RBI and a team-best .610 slugging percentage in just 82 at-bats.

On The Mound:
•   Fifth-year senior Tim Willittes (0-2, 10.45) returns to the rotation after being granted a medical redshirt by the Ivy League after he missed the 2015 season. He has been a work horse ever since, making 19 starts over the last two-plus seasons.
•   Though a senior, Tyler Fernandez (0-1, 18.00) is making his collegiate debut this year. He missed the last three years rehabilitating injuries.
•   Senior Tommy Morris (2-2, 4.60) started all six of his appearances last season after joining the team via transfer from Division-III Kenyon. He was the Big Red's most effective starter in the season-opening series at Texas A&M.
•   Sophomore Seth Urbon (0-1, 6.52) has entered the rotation in his first year with the Big Red after transferring from Georgia Tech. He is the younger brother of former Cornell standout Kellon Urbon '15. 

Making History:
•   Varsity baseball at Cornell started in 1869, so program firsts are few and far between two centuries later — but seniors Dale Wickham and Trey Baur have provided a couple over the last two years. 
•   On May 1, 2016, 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 at Princeton.
•   On April 5, 2017, Baur was at the forefront of Cornell's 27-14 lambasting of Towson. He was 6-for-7 with two doubles and a home run, becoming the first player in program history with six hits in a single game.

Proceed With Caution:
•   Senior Ellis Bitar is the only Ivy League catcher to have been named to the Johnny Bench Award watch list in each of the last two seasons. The award is given annually to the best catcher in Division I, and Bitar proved his wares last year by 
batting .286 and throwing out 23 prospective base-stealers against 32 stolen bases over the last two seasons. 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.

Gridiron Gang:
•   Cornell has two players on its roster who have also played for the football team in senior outfielder Kyle Gallagher and senior pitcher Austin Wahl. 
•   Gallagher became an everyday outfielder for the Big Red last season after playing five games at quarterback with the football team as a freshman. Wahl was a safety on the scout team in 2013, then walked on to the baseball team and made eight appearances in 2016. 

About Fordham:
•   The Rams are 8-5-1 after a 10-7 loss to Wagner on Wednesday.
•   Game 1 start Ben Greenberg is 2-0 with a 1.10 ERA and an opponents' average of just .113. The weekend's other starters, Reiss Knehr and Anthony DiMaglio, are tied for the lead in strikeouts with 24, with DiMeglio reaching that number in just 13.2 innings. 
•   Billy Godrick paces the offense with a .314 average and three of the team's six home runs. The Rams are aggressive runners, stealing 44 bases so far in just 14 games.

Series History vs. Fordham: 
•   The Big Red owns an 11-5 lead in the all-time series, which dates all the way back to 1891. The last meeting between the teams was April 14, 1972, with Cornell winning, 6-1.

Up Next: 
•   Cornell is scheduled to play its first home games of the season in the form of a four-game series against Niagara. Doubleheaders are slated to start at noon March 24-25.