ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team will attempt to close out its season with four straight Ivy League series victories when it hosts Columbia for a three-game set at Hoy Field. The teams will start off with a doubleheader at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, then the team's 10 seniors will be honored in an on-field presentation before the 1 p.m. Sunday finale.  

SERIES INFORMATION
Columbia at Cornell
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 13-20-1, 8-10 Ivy League;
                    Columbia 16-26, 11-7 Ivy League
SERIES RECORDS: Cornell leads, 130-109
VIDEO: IvyLeagueNetwork.com
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Game 1 • 11:30 a.m. Saturday, May 12
   Columbia (Chriss, RHP, 2-5, 5.66)   •   Cornell (Willittes, RHP, 3-4, 5.37)
Game 2 • ~2:30 p.m. Saturday, May 12
   Columbia (Egly, RHP, 2-3, 4.84)   •   Cornell (Urbon, RHP, 2-2, 5.43)
Game 3 • 1 p.m. Sunday, May 13
   Columbia (To be determined)   •   Cornell (Morris, RHP, 0-2, 5.40)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Columbia game notes (PDF)

What's at Stake:
•   While Cornell has been eliminated from postseason contention, it knows it can finish no lower than sixth place in the Ivy League standings and can climb as high at third with a strong showing this weekend. Meanwhile, Columbia enters the weekend a half-game behind Dartmouth for the second and final berth in the Ivy League Championship series. Yale is in firm control of the other spot and also on the cusp of locking up home-field advantage.

The Big Red, In Brief:
•   Cornell won the bookends of its series last weekend at Brown, marking the third consecutive Ivy set in which it has taken two of three. 
•   Ryan Krainz hit a two-run single in the top of the 10th inning and the Big Red stormed from an early six-run hole to win Saturday's opener against the Bears, 10-7. Kyle Gallagher had drove in at least one run in four of his five at-bats, with five RBI total.
•   Cornell rallied again in the second game, with Kalani Matton blasting a pinch-hit grand slam with one out in the ninth to tie the game. He was subsequently named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week, but Brown plated an unearned run in the bottom of the ninth to walk off with a victory.
•   Trey Baur then powered the Big Red to a 4-2 win in Sunday's rubber game, breaking a 2-all tie in the eighth inning with a two-run homer — his first of the season. Austin Wahl worked four scoreless innings in relief to earn the victory. 
•   Cornell has scored 159 runs in its last 25 (6.36 per game) after plating just 21 runs in its first nine (2.33 per game). There are five different batters — Dale Wickham, Ryan Krainz, Eliis Bitar, Will Simoneit and Kyle Gallagher — that enter the series against Columbia with at least 11 hits in the last 10 games.

On Offense:
•   Hitting from lead-off spot, senior Ryan Krainz has taken over the team lead with a .293 average and has reached base safely in 31 of Cornell's 34 games. A selection to the All-Ivy League first team last year, Krainz has six of his 10 stolen bases (second-highest in the Ivy League) and 15 hits over the last 10 games.
•   Junior Will Simoneit (.290), ranks second on the team in average, doubles (seven) and stolen bases (seven). His 27 RBI rank third on the squad.
•   Senior Ellis Bitar (.273) ranks second on the squad with four homes runs and 28 RBI. He had a streak of reaching base safely in 26 consecutive games snapped last week — the program's longest such streak since Nathan Ford in 2009 (all 40 games).
•   Senior Dale Wickham (.279) leads the team in home runs (five), RBI (29) and OPS (.929). The team's primary designated hitter, Wickham was the Ivy League Player of the Week on April 23.
•   Senior Kyle Gallagher (.286) has a team-high nine doubles and a .432 on base 
percentage, which ranks second on the team but fourth in the Ivy League. He's drawn 34 walks, which gives him the sixth-highest walks per game rate (1.00) in the nation.

On The Mound:
•   Fifth-year senior Tim Willittes (3-4, 5.87) leads the team with 50 strikeouts and has tossed at least six innings in seven of his 10 starts. He's returned to the rotation after 
being granted a medical redshirt by the Ivy League for missing the 2015 season.
•   Sophomore Seth Urbon (2-2, 5.64) has given the Big Red some length with 27 innings over his last four starts (2-0 in that stretch). The transfer from Georgia Tech is the younger brother of former Cornell standout Kellen Urbon '15.
•   Senior Tommy Morris (0-2, 4.80) has re-entered the rotation in recent weeks. He was the Big Red's Opening Day starter at Texas A&M, then made four relief appearances after returning from injury before an April 22 start at Penn. 
•   Sophomore Colby Wyatt (0-1, 3.86, 2 SV) leads the team with 18 relief appearances. He ranks third on the team with 27 strikeouts despite working just 23.1 innings.
•   Sophomore Andrew Ellison (2-4, 2.10, 3 SV) has yielded just four extra-base hits in 25.2 innings over 15 appearances. He has stranded all 10 of the 11 runners he's inherited with the opposition batting just .135 against him with runners on base.
•   Senior reliever Austin Wahl (2-0, 2.76) hasn't conceded a run in his last 10 outings, including 7.1 innings with just one hit allowed in Ivy League play.

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.

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 in 2016.

About Columbia:
•   The Lions have the Ivy League's top offense in conference games, leading the way with a .310 average, 119 runs, 16 home runs and .449 slugging percentage. 
•   Joe Engel leads the team with a .329 average and ranks second with 28 RBI despite having just one home run to date.
•   Chandler Bengtson (.266) leads the league with 10 home runs (seven in Ivy play), 29 RBI and a .519 slugging percentage, but also with 52 strikeouts.
•   Liam McGill (.317) has a team-high 12 doubles and five home runs.
•   Randell Kanemaru (.309) is the reigning Ivy League Player of the Year.
•   Jordan Chriss (2-5, 5.66) rejoined the rotation after a tough start to the year. He's 2-1 with a 2.03 ERA in Ivy League play.
•   Lefty Ben Wereski (2-4, 7.36) leads the team with 33 strikeouts. After recording 11 saves over his first three collegiate season, Harrison Egly (2-3, 4.84) now fills out the weekend rotation.
•   Though the bullpen is righty-heavy, southpaws Leo Pollack (1-1, 3.34, SV) and Lucas Hall (1-0, 1.65, 4 SV) play key roles. Pollack has pitched in a team-high 23 games, and Hall has emerged as the closer with 26 strikeouts in just 16.1 innings.

Series History vs. Columbia:
•   Columbia is the third-most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's three games running the series tally to 242 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 130-109 lead in the all-time series, winning three of four games against Columbia in each of the last two seasons. The Big Red plated 36 runs in last year's four games, and Tim Willittes and Tommy Morris each earned victories.