After its first four games of Ivy League play, Dartmouth has two Ivy-honored baseball players and a 2-2 record in the league.
The Big Green had mixed results on the diamond after rain and poor conditions postponed its weekend games against Penn and Columbia on Monday and Tuesday. Dartmouth lost two close games in the doubleheader in Philadelphia on Monday, 4-3 and 10-8 in 10 innings.
The Big Green bounced back on Tuesday with two high scoring wins in New York against the Lions, 9-8 and 10-3.
Jeff Speights '05 was named Ivy League Co-Player of the Week after hitting .619 with seven doubles and 10 RBIs in five games. Freshman hurler Russell Young was feted with a place on the Ivy League Weekly Honor Roll after pitching seven shut-out innings against Columbia and receiving his first Ivy win.
Despite offensive heroics by Jeff Speights '05 during Monday's doubleheader, Dartmouth dropped its first two Ivy League games against the Quakers.
Speights drove in the first run of the game with a double in the first inning to score Will Bashelor '07. With two outs in the first inning, the Quakers retaliated with four runs on a three-run blast and a fly ball lost in the wind that allowed a runner from first to score off of starter Jeff Wilkerson '07.
Wilkerson settled down for the remainder of the game, allowing seven hits, striking out two and not surrendering a walk during his complete game.
Dartmouth staged a comeback in the fifth, when Speights drove in Chris Grimm '05 with a one-out double and Will Schmidley '08 drew a walk with the bases loaded and two down to bring the score to 4-3.
With its final opportunity to win the game, the Big Green left the bases loaded in the top of the seventh as Penn closer Andy Console punched out Erik Bell '08 to clinch the win. The Big Green left 12 men on base during the game.
Going into the second game, the Big Green hoped that it could rely on solid pitching from Josh Faiola '06 and strategically directed frustration from its close loss to split the doubleheader. A slugfest until the bitter end, however, the second game of the doubleheader against the Quakers was determined by Jarron Smith's two-out two-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th, giving the Quakers the advantage in the 10-8 extra inning game.
Again, Dartmouth established an early lead against Penn with a two-out pop-up that dropped in shallow left and scored Andrew Nacario '07. Penn gained the lead with a two run shot off of Faiola, who struggled in the third inning giving up an RBI double and another two-run shot before settling down to deny 14 consecutive batters.
Meanwhile, Dartmouth tied up the game 5-5 with the help of sloppy defensive work by the Quakers in the fifth inning, and took the lead in the seventh with an RBI double by Bashelor and a single by Speights to make the score 7-5.
Penn and Dartmouth traded runs in the seventh and the top of the eighth on solo home runs. The Quakers tied up the game at 8-8 in the bottom of the eighth on a two misplays by Nacario and Marty Hebert '05.
Dartmouth threatened in the 10th with two men on and one out, but Penn pitcher Steven Schwartz came through in the clutch and suppressed the uprising. In the bottom of the inning, Smith provided the heroics with a two-run shot off of closer Nick Peay '05 to end the game. Dartmouth returned to the field on Tuesday with some sweeping of its own.
The Big Green ended its nine-game losing streak by stifling a Lions comeback in the first game 9-8 and winning the second game decidedly 10-3.
In the first game, the Big Green looked to Speights' bat again for its offensive power. Speights hit three doubles in the first four innings and the Big Green was up 7-2.
Two more unearned runs were added in the fifth inning and Stephen Perry '07, last year's Ivy Rookie of the Year, looked set to cruise to an easy finish to the game.
The Lions began to rally in the fifth inning with four runs against Perry with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly, a double and a fly ball Bashelor lost in the sun.
Two more runs crossed the plate for the Lions on another solar miscue, but Perry managed to finish the game 9-8 before more damage was done. Perry received the win with seven strikeouts and added momentum for the second game of the doubleheader.
Making a bid for another Dartmouth pitcher to win Ivy Rookie of the Year, Russell Young '08 pitched seven scoreless innings while the offense punched 10 runs on 11 hits in the last four innings of the game.
Young was able to hold runners on base throughout the game and was assisted by two key double plays in the third and fourth innings.
The Big Green put numbers on the board in the sixth inning with an RBI single by Speights and a sacrifice fly by Josh Bailey '05 to make the score 2-0. Hebert had his second two-run single of the doubleheader in the eighth inning adding to the flurry of runs in the last four innings.
Dartmouth set season highs with 10 runs and 15 hits in the game and added momentum to its upcoming doubleheaders at home against the 2004 Ivy Champions Princeton on Saturday and Cornell on Sunday.
"It was disappointing to lose two close games against Penn on Monday, but the way we rebounded and came out to play and took two from Columbia was crucial," Speights noted.
After coming up just short last year and being picked by Baseball America to win the Ivy Championship, the Big Green have high hopes for the season.
"I think that we have all the tools we need to win an Ivy championship and we saw that come to the forefront [in these games]," Perry said.
Next weekend's games against Princeton will be decisive in determining the team's strength this season.
