At Centennial Field in Burlington, VT, Dartmouth smoked the Vermont Catamounts in baseball action yesterday afternoon. The Big Green hurled a 9-0 shutout to improve to 20-16 on the season.
Kevan Graves '03 continued a run of strong pitching performances by the Big Green as they gear up for a possible rematch with Princeton for the Ivy League Championship. Graves held the Catamounts to seven hits over 7.1 innings while walking only one.
As Graves was shutting down the hosts, Dartmouth's offense was staking him to a comfortable lead. Dartmouth scored in the second inning and then added three more in the third.
Matt Klentak '02 led off the third with a solo home run, his second dinger in five days after hitting one against Harvard on Saturday. Andrew Cronin '01 and Michael Levy '01 followed up with RBI singles to give Graves a 4-0 lead.
Cronin was once again behind the plate to allow Levy to rest for the Ivy playoff games after his 37 innings of crouching against Harvard this past weekend. Levy was in the lineup at DH.
Justin Bissonnette held Dartmouth scoreless in the fourth and fifth before giving way to Andy Braley who did the same thing in the sixth and seventh. The Catamounts then brought in Doug Thompson to pitch the eighth and it killed any hope of a Vermont comeback.
After a run in the eighth, Thompson got only two batters into the ninth inning as Dartmouth went on to add four unearned runs off of Thompson and his replacement Brian Cain. Vermont committed five errors over the course of the game.
Vermont finally put up a fight late in the game, loading the bases in both the seventh and eighth innings.
In the seventh, Graves retired Derek Root to end the Vermont rally. Bryn Alderson '03 came on for Graves with one out in the eighth and got the Big Green out of a jam by inducing a double play ball off the bat of Dennis Moser.
Alderson then sailed through the ninth allowing a base hit and closing out the nine-hit collaborative shutout.
Dartmouth hammered out 12 hits against Catamount pitchers, with Levy, Mike Mileusnic '03, Cooper Chapin '04 and Brian Nickerson '00 pacing the team with two hits each. Nickerson added to his record for all-time hits at Dartmouth; he now has 205 for his career.
Chapin had two RBI for the Big Green while Cronin, Levy, Mileusnic, Klentak and Jason Dacosta '03 each had one. Todd Grzywacz was the only Catamount with multiple hits, going 2-3 on the day.
Dartmouth now will host Brown today at 3 p.m. to determine the winner of the Red Rolfe Division. Brown swept its makeup games against Cornell to tie the Big Green in the standings.
The winner of the game will host Princeton in a best two-out-of-three series this weekend to determine the Ivy League Champion. Dartmouth has already taken three out of four from the Bears this season on April 13-14.
