The battle for the Ivy League crown will culminate in a do-or-die doubleheader this afternoon between the Dartmouth Big Green and the Harvard Crimson.
Unfortunately the Crimson's 9-0 conference record puts them in the driver's seat with three Ivy League games left. One win over the Big Green this afternoon will clinch the title for Harvard.
Dartmouth, with a 6-2 Ivy record will have to win their final four games -- doubleheaders at Harvard and Cornell -- and have Harvard defeat Cornell on Sunday in order to stay alive. In the event that the Big Red defeat Harvard on Saturday, Dartmouth would only need to win one out of two games on Sunday to force a playoff.
Not surprisingly, Harvard and Dartmouth also hold all of this week's player honors. The Crimson's Mairead McKendry captured player of the week honors by going 8-12 at the plate this week with six runs scored, seven RBI, and a slugging percentage of 1.000.
Harvard also has the Ivy League's pitcher of the week in Chelsea Thoke. The junior gave up seven hits, no earned runs and struck out eleven in 11 innings pitched.
Dartmouth's own Christine Quattrocchi '03 received rookie of the week honors by posting a 3-0 record and striking out 19 batters. Quattrocchi now holds the Dartmouth single-season mark for strikeouts with 121, has a 12-game win streak, and leads the league in ERA and strikeouts.
Brown had a five game winning streak until dropping the second game of their doubleheader with Yale on Friday, and have gone on to drop three straight.
Columbia has been a story in their first year as a Division I program. They split every doubleheader they played this year.
Columbia went into extra innings twice last week, coming back to tie Fordham 2-2 and defeating the Stony Brook Seawolves 8-5.
Cornell's Nicole Zitarelli gave up six earned runs over 24.2 innings last week. The Big Red arel gearing up for Harvard and Dartmouth over the weekend.
The Quakers lost three games last week to finish their season 13-30-1 overall and 2-10 in the Ivy League.
The Tigers sparked a seven-run sixth inning with a two-run triple against Robert Morris. Sophomore right-hander Sarah Jane White pitched four hitless innings in her start against Villanova.
Yale's seven seniors won 99 games in their careers, the most of any four-year stretch in school history.
Khelia Johnson will graduate tied for the school record in RBI with 73 while Kristen Maturo is tied for the school record for doubles with 27. The Bulldogs finished their season 19-23-1 overall, 5-7 in the Ivy League.
