ITHACA, N.Y. —  The baseball team will have an extra game added to its home stand with Canisius now visiting Hoy Field at noon Wednesday. The teams were originally scheduled to play a doubleheader in Buffalo on Tuesday, but inclement weather has led to the teams to instead agree on playing a single game Wednesday in Ithaca.

SERIES INFORMATION
Canisius at Cornell
Noon Wednesday, April 4
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 4-11, Canisius 14-9
SERIES RECORDS: Cornell leads, 11-6
VIDEO: Ivy League Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Cornell (RHP Adam Saks, 0-0, 8.10)  •   Canisius (RHP Omar Ward, 0-0, 9.00)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Canisius game notes

Big Red Rewind:
•   Cornell opened its Ivy League season over the weekend at Princeton, winning the first game on Saturday, 5-2, before the hosts took the final two of the series, 10-4 and 7-6. Josh Arndt led the team with five hits on the weekend.
•   Two of Jason Apostle's three hits drove in runs, and Tim Willittes settled down after the Tigers scored twice in the first inning. Cornell batted around in the sixth inning, scoring four times to take the lead for good. Willittes worked into the eighth to earn the victory, improving to 2-0 with a 1.71 ERA and 16 strikeouts in his last three starts.
•   Ellis Bitar hit a three-run triple to give the Big Red a 4-2 lead in Saturday's night cap, but the Tigers scored eight unanswered to split the twin bill. 
•   Both teams' starters struggled and both bullpens strived in Sunday's rubber game. Andrew Ellison inherited the bases loaded with one out in the fifth and got out of the jam to keep the game tied. He worked 3.2 strong innings, but Princeton scratched out a run in the seventh to win.
•   In its last mid-week game, Cornell defeated Penn State, 10-6, last Wednesday. It was just the program's second victory in 25 visits to the Nittany Lions' home facility. Kalani Matton hit his first collegiate home run in the second inning, and the Big Red never trailed in a back-and-forth affair that was halted for good in the eighth inning due to thickening fog in Happy Valley.

The Long Road:
•   While Cornell's record sits at 4-11, the Big Red is a .500 team since starting the season with seven straight losses. With one the team's most challenging starts to the season in recent memory, Cornell started off at Texas A&M and Duke. While the Big Red was swept in both sets, the season opener against the Aggies was a one-run game, 3-2.
•   Before finally debuting at home on March 25, the Big Red also played three games Match 17-18 at Fordham. Cornell's first victory came in the second game after a ninth-inning rally to send the game to an extra inning and the go-ahead run in the 10th.

On Offense:
•   Though the Big Red is batting .221 for the season, it's also trending in the right direction with a respectable .266 average over the last nine games. Cornell boasts five batters with an average of at least .300 over that stretch.
•   Cornell has scored 36 runs in last six (6.00 per game) after plating just 21 in its first nine (2.33 per game).
•   Senior Kyle Gallagher continues his torrid start to the season with a .365 average and .529 on base percentage, thanks to a team-high 18 walks against just 11 strikeouts. 
•   The top of the order has started to heat up with senior Ryan Krainz having now reached base in 13 straight games. The 2017 All-Ivy League first team selection now ranks second on the team with a .286 average. 
•   Senior Ellis Bitar, who typically bats one spot behind Krainz in the order, has also raised his average to .264. He leads the team with 11 runs scored and drove in five runs in the Princeton series to move into a tie with senior Dale Wickham for the team lead with 11 RBI.
•   Wickham sported a .406 average last year, which would have been fourth-best in the nation if he had enough at-bats to qualify. He missed 13 games in the heart of the Ivy League slate due to injury.
•   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.

On The Mound:
•   Seniors Tim Willittes and Tyler Fernandez, and sophomore Seth Urbon started games in the Princeton series, thus are unlikely to factor into the game vs. Canisius.
•   Junior Adam Saks (0-0, 8.10) is scheduled to Wednesday's game, which would be his first collegiate start and tie him for the team lead this season with eight appearances.
•   Sophomores Colby Wyatt (0-1, 2.25, 2 SV) and Andrew Ellison (1-2, 3.27) have emerged as two of the team's top bullpen arms. Wyatt has 16 strikeouts in just 12 innings and earned two saves in the last week. Ellison has yielded just one extra-base hit in 11 innings over five appearances. 

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 Canisius:
•   The Golden Griffins lost two of three games in a MAAC series against Monmouth over the weekend to fall to 14-9 for the season.
•   Canisius bats .260 as a team, led by Liam Wilson's .344 average. He has 13 doubles, more than twice as many as anyone else on the team, and three home runs. Conner Morro is batting .321. Ryan Stekl leads the squad with four home runs and 21 RBI.
•   The Griffins' pitching staff boasts a 3.93 ERA, with a weekend rotation of J.P. Stevenson, Charlie Sobieraski and Andrew Sipowicz. Freshman righty Omar Ward (0-0, 9.00) is slated to start Wednesday, having only appeared in one collegiate inning before.
•   Tyler Smith (0-1, 1.69) leads the team in both appearances (nine) and saves (six ), though he has issued 12 walks in 10.2 innings of work. Will Frank (1-0, 1.08) has eight appearances with three saves and 21 strikeouts over 16.2 innings.

Series History vs. Canisius: 
•   The Big Red holds a big 11-6 advantage in the all-time series, though Canisius has won five of the last six games after sweeping a doubleheader in Buffalo two years ago. The teams were scheduled to meet last year, but it was cancelled due to rain.
•   Cornell and Canisius played each other 10 times over a 13-year span from 1979-1991, with the Big Red winning the first nine meetings before the Golden Griffins secured a 4-3 victory in the second game of a doubleheader on April 23, 1991. The Big Red has scored at least nine runs in seven of its last nine victories over Canisius.

Up Next: 
•   Cornell returns to Hoy Field for a three-game Ivy League series against Yale on Saturday and Sunday.