While Dartmouth was pounding away on the helpless Catamounts, the Big Green's fate was being decided in Ithaca, NY by Brown and Cornell. Needing to sweep the Big Red in order to force a one-game playoff with Dartmouth, Brown played some of its best baseball and took both games yesterday.
In the first game, Brown's Jim Johnson stifled Cornell's lineup, holding them to only one hit over seven innings while striking out 11. The one hit was an RBI double by Raul Gomez in the first inning which scored Eric Rico from first base after Rico had received one of Johnson's three walks on the day.
Brown got all the runs it needed in the first inning off a pair of errors, a bunt single and a two RBI single by John Cappello which netted the Bears three runs. Brown would add four more over the course of the game against Cornell's Brendan McQuaid, who hurled a complete game.
McQuaid was betrayed by six Big Red errors which yielded six unearned runs for the Bears.
The second game was far more competitive, at least for the first seven innings. Cornell struck first against Jonathan Stern, on an RBI single by Rico and an RBI double by Nick Graham.
The Bears struck back against David Self in the top of the third, tying the score at two on a two-run shot by Kantrovitz to left field. Brown broke through again in the top of the sixth, pounding Self for four runs.
A three-run dinger by Greg Metzger caused the bulk of the damage and was followed soon after by an RBI triple from Matt Kutler. Cornell got to Stern again in the bottom of the seventh, knocking him out of the game after Gomez took him deep for a pair and Dan Baysinger doubled in Justin Irizarry.
Brown struck for eight runs off of John Hardy and Glenn Morris in the eighth, with five of the runs being unearned after an error by Baysinger. The explosion deflated Cornell and the Big Red could manage only one hit in both the eighth and ninth innings as Brown capped off the sweep with a 14-5 victory.
Brown will now come to Hanover today at 3 p.m. to try and steal the Red Rolfe Division title out from under the Big Green who have beaten Brown three out of four times this year.
