ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell baseball team will play its final home games of the season when it hosts Penn for a three-game Ivy League series at Hoy Field. The teams will start off with a doubleheader at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, then the team's four seniors will be honored in an on-field presentation before the noon Sunday finale. 
 

SERIES INFORMATION

Penn at Cornell
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 9-21, 4-11 Ivy League;
                    Penn 20-14; 8-7 Ivy League
SERIES RECORD: Penn leads, 158-123-2
VIDEO: ESPN+ | Game 1 | Game 2 | Game 3
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Game 1 • 11:30 a.m. Saturday, April 27
   Cornell (Wyatt, RHP, 2-5, 3.71)   •   Penn (Scafidi, RHP, 4-1, 3.25)
Game 2 • ~2:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27
   Cornell (Zacharias, RHP, 0-3, 3.21)   •   Penn (Holcomb, RHP, 5-0, 3.81)
Game 3 • Noon Sunday, April 28
   Cornell (Bemiss, RHP, 2-2, 4.98)   •   Penn (Kendrick, LHP, 0-2, 3.52)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
 

150 Years of Cornell Baseball:

•   This season marks the 150th year of baseball at Cornell, as it continues to be the oldest varsity sport at the university dating back to a 43-26 victory over Cascadilla Club of Ithaca on May 5, 1869. A celebration commemorating the program's sesquicentennial will be held at Saturday's doubleheader.
 

Princeton Series Redux:

•   Cornell won the middle game of last weekend's Ivy League series against Princeton, setting a season-high for runs in a single game with a 15-9 victory in Saturday's night cap. The Big Red scored seven runs in the fifth inning to erase a five-run deficit. Josh Arndt was 3-for-4 with a double, a stolen base and four runs scored, and Alex Carnegie punctuated the effort with a three-run triple in the eighth to blow the game open.
•   Princeton won Saturday's opener, 7-2, behind eight strong innings from Ryan Smith. Luke Yacinich pitched well in long relief for the Big Red, yielding just one run in four frames. Adam Saks was 2-for-4 with a double, scoring one of Cornell's runs in the eighth.
•   In a well-played rubber game on Sunday, Jeb Bemiss pitched Cornell's first nine-inning complete game in nearly two years, but he came up on the short side when Princeton plated a pair of runs in the ninth for a 4-2 victory. Matt Collins hit his first home run of the season in the sixth inning to tie the game at 2.
 

The Big Red, In Brief:

•   Dan Pepicelli is in his fourth season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball. He has a 58-84-1 record at the helm.
•   Cornell was scheduled to play a non-league game Tuesday at Binghamton, but the game was canceled due to inclement weather.
 

On Offense:

•   Cornell's bats are continuing their upward trend, having now averaged 8.53 hits per game over the last 17 contests after averaging just 4.85 over its first 13 games. Over the last 17, the team is batting .258 with 33 doubles, and it has four players batting .290 or better.
•   Senior Adam Saks leads the team with a .294 average, having taken over the everyday role in center field while primarily batting leadoff. He's also drawn 10 walks against just nine strikeouts. After spending his first three years on East Hill exclusively deployed as a pitcher, Saks has reached base safely in all 18 of his starts.
•   Senior Will Simoneit was 6-for-11 in the Princeton series to up his batting average to .284, and he has two of the team's seven home runs. Simoneit topped .300 in each of the last two seasons.
•   Junior Alex Carnegie leads the team with 14 RBI, followed by 13 from freshman Austin Flematti.
•   Sophomore Ramon Garza (.236) has a team-high eight doubles and is a perfect 7-for-7 on stolen-base attempts. That ranks second on the team behind just junior Matt Collins (10-for-10).
 

On The Mound:

•   Pitching continues to be the Big Red's strength this season. Cornell ranks second in the Ivy League with a 4.73 earned run average, and it leads the league in team shutouts (three), strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.24) and WHIP (1.42).
•   Junior Colby Wyatt (2-5, 3.71) and freshman Jonathan Zacharias (0-3, 3.21) are scheduled to start the Saturday doubleheader. Zacharias and Luke Yacinich (2-4, 9.12) are the first freshmen to make weekend starts in Dan Pepicelli's four years at the helm.
•   Junior Jeb Bemiss (2-2, 4.98) is scheduled to anchor the series after two stellar outings. In the month of April, he has 1.35 ERA with 29 strikeouts over 26.2 innings.
•   The Big Red boasts two of the best relievers in the league. Junior John Natoli (3-1, 2.00, 4 SV) has been a force with 32 strikeouts and just three extra-base hits (all doubles) surrendered in 27 innings. Like Natoil (.192), the opposition is also hitting below .200 against junior Andrew Ellison (0-0, 2.79, SV; .179) 
•   Beyond Natoli, freshman Niko Lillios (0-0, 3.27) and sophomore Trevor Daniel Davis (0-0, 3.65) have the next-most relief appearances with nine. 
 

Honor Roll:

•   Cornell placed five on the All-Ivy League teams last season, but just senior Will Simoneit returns from that group. Simoneit was placed on the All-Ivy Second Team for a second straight year, with the unique distinction of garnering those honors from different positions — catcher in 2017; third base in 2018.
 

About Penn:

•   The Quakers enter the weekend tied for third place in the Ivy League standings at 8-7, which leaves them three games behind Columbia for first place and two games between Harvard for the final spot in the Ivy League Championship Series. 
•   Penn improved to 20-14 overall after a 5-2 victory over Seton Hall in a non-league game on Wednesday, powered by three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning. The win ended a four-game losing streak, including a three-game sweep at the hands of Yale last weekend.
•   The Quakers are powered by one of the nation's top offenses, ranking first nationally in doubles per game (2.82) and second in runs per game (9.3) and batting average (.338).
•   Matt O'Neill leads the charge with a .409 average that ranks 10th in the nation. While his 31 strikeouts are second-most on the team, he's also drawn 37 walks in just 33 games to give him a gaudy .542 on base percentage.
•   In all, Penn has seven qualifying batters with an average of at least .339. Josh Hood leads the team with seven home runs, and Craig Larsen has a team-leading 42 RBI.
•   The Quakers also lead the Ivy League with a 4.45 earned run average, headlined by three starters with sub-4.00 ERAs. Righties Christian Scafidi (4-1, 3.25; team-high 45 strikeouts) and Mitchell Holcomb (5-0, 3.78, CG) are scheduled to start Saturday, with southpaw John Alan Kendrick (0-2, 3.52) slated to toe the rubber Sunday.
•   Kevin Eaise (2-2, 3.10, 2 SV) leads the team with 13 relief appearances. Both of his losses came in the Yale series before he earned the save Wednesday vs. Seton Hall. 
•   Opponents are hitting just .151 off Grant Guillory (0-0, 4.71), though seven of the 11 hits he's surrendered have been for extra bases. His 11 appearances are tied for second on the team with lefties Joe Miller (4-1, 5.40) and Jacob Sadowitz (1-2, 6.97). 
 

Series History vs. Penn:

•   Penn is the most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's three games running the series tally to 286 games. Cornell won a pair of one-run games to bookend last year's three-game series in Philadelphia, with the teams combining to score 46 runs on the weekend. 
•   While Penn has the series advantage, 158-123-2, Cornell has enjoyed success in the most recent meetings between the squads. In the last 61 meetings, the Big Red is 36-25 against the Quakers with just five series losses in the last 16 years.
 

Up Next:

•   After a quick trip to Binghamton for a non-league game at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Big Red wraps up the Ivy League portion of its season May 4-5 with three games at Dartmouth.