The Big Green baseball team begins their quest for an Ivy League title when they open up league play at Cornell and Princeton this weekend. Dartmouth enters the weekend fresh off of a 12-4 drubbing of Tufts which improved their record to 11-2 on the season.
The win over Tufts Wednesday afternoon was a key victory as it helped to erase the bitter taste of Tuesday's upset loss at the hands of Babson College. Dartmouth took control of the Tufts contest early, using a Ron Friedman '99 home run in their opening at-bat to ignite the offense. Dartmouth's lead grew to as large as 10-1 before Tufts mounted a small rally in the seventh inning that would still leave them well-short.
Friedman's homer was just one part of his monstrous afternoon which saw the junior left-fielder go a perfect four-for-four from the plate. Second-baseman Mike Conway '99 also extended his hit streak to 15 games going back to the end of last season.
Most importantly, the pitching staff rebounded from a poor outing the afternoon before at Babson to find its rhythm just in time for the opening weekend of Ivy League play. Sophomore Conor Brooks '00 tossed three innings of one-run ball before being replaced by the eventual winner, Matt Tarver-Wahlquist '98. Brooks, along with seniors Eric Walania '98, Pete Sellers '98 and freshman Mark Swan will be the probable starters for this weekend's four games against the Big Red and the Tigers.
Cornell comes into the weekend sporting a 5-6-1 record on the season after a trip to Georgia that saw the Big Red take on Mercer and Georgia State. The Big Red finished with a 7- 13 league record last year and with a 13-26 mark overall.
Princeton had been on a winning streak before falling to Rutgers on Tuesday. The Tigers played North Carolina and North Carolina State close earlier in the season before falling to the two ACC schools. The Tigers are the defending champions of the league's Lou Gehrig division but lost to Harvard in the Ivy League championship series.
One of the most important keys for Dartmouth this weekend will be staying healthy since the team has been hit by a rash of injuries, the most prominent prematurely claiming the season of last year's Ivy League rookie of the year Brian Nickerson '00.
"The two keys to winning this weekend is playing good defense and staying healthy," Friedman said. "We know everytime we go out we are going to hit the ball well and get good pitching, so we have to focus on the other aspects of the game to make sure we come out with a win."
"In the Ivy League when you play four games a weekend, you can't afford to slip up and have a bad weekend," co-Captain Conway said. "These games are very important," James Little '00 said. "We can't afford to lose in the beginning of the year with how difficult the last two weekends are when we face Harvard and Yale."
