Dartmouth took the second game of the doubleheader against the Big Red 16-6 before sweeping Princeton 7-6 and 10-8 in New Jersey on Sunday.
The nightcap rout against Cornell gave head coach Bob Whalen career victory number 300 in his 17 years as the Big Green skipper.
"I didn't even know that he was going for his 300th win this weekend," co-captain Josh Faiola '06 said about his coach's milestone. "It was nice to be able to give him the game ball for once."
The victories came over a weekend in which teams in the Red Rolfe Division went a combined 13-3 against squads from the Lou Gehrig Division, which includes Cornell and Princeton.
Co-captain Tommy Myette '06 said that while any victory for the Big Green in the short Ivy League season is important, the team will need to duplicate this type of success against its division opponents if it hopes to repeat its championship run of 2004.
"Taking three of four is definitely a good start, but everyone in our division is at least 3-1 now," he said. "The important three out of four games are the ones in our own division. Those types of weekends knock a team out of the race."
Grabbing the early lead was the key to success for Dartmouth; in the three wins, the Big Green scored at least four runs by the third inning and held their opponents to a combined seven runs during that span.
"It is huge to jump on top of a team and get that early lead," Faiola said. "We've been doing a great job of that all year and it puts the other team in a bit of a panic mode."
After spoiling a splendid pitching performance by starter Jeff Wilkerson '07 in a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to Cornell, Big Green hitters bounced back with 14 runs in four innings in the second game. The offensive explosion chased Big Red starter Walker Toma to the dugout after he yielded 10 runs, nine earned, off of eight hits and two strikeouts in two innings.
"It was a tough loss for Wilkerson because he threw the best out of all the starters and just didn't have things go his way. But that's baseball," Faiola said. Wilkerson only allowed five baserunners in six innings pitched in the game.
Johnathon Santopadre '09 started the rally in game two from the leadoff spot when he drove a double to right centerfield, setting up a RBI single by Damon Wright '08. After Will Bashelor '07 scored the first of his four runs on a bases-loaded walk and Wright came home on a passed ball, Jack Monahon '09 drove in two runs with a single to give the men in green a 5-0 advantage.
Myette and Bashelor tacked on two more runs in the second off extra-base hits and the Big Green took a 12-1 stranglehold by the third inning.
Faiola pitched nine complete innings to record his second straight victory and third overall, giving up nine hits, including a three-run homer in the fourth, while striking out four.
The Big Green had similar fortunes in the opening contest against Princeton. Myette and Bashelor connected for doubles to lead a five-hit, four-run barrage in the first inning and Santopadre scored from second on a RBI single by Bashelor in the second to widen the gap by four. Bashelor later scored on a RBI triple by Wright to go up 7-1 in the fourth inning.
The lead would be too much for Princeton to overcome despite two Tigers home runs and four runs scored in the fourth inning. Kyle Zeis '08 earned his third save after winner Russell Young '08 turned the ball over after four innings of work from the mound.
The Big Green would have to fight through the middle innings in the nightcap despite scoring an early run in the first on two Tiger errors. Winning pitcher Chase Carpenter '08 preserved the fragile lead by pitching out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the second, but the Tigers used a pair of singles and an error to take a 5-4 lead.
After knotting the score 6-6 in the fifth inning, the Big Green added four runs in the seventh and eighth innings to cap off the sweep. Myette came through with a clutch two-out, two-run single in the seventh to widen the gap by three, which proved too much for the Tigers to match.
Myette hopes that the "solid core" of underclassmen will learn valuable lessons from the weekend. "The way a team bounces back from losing the first game of a four game weekend, especially after such a close defeat, says a lot about the team," he said. "I think the younger guys learned an invaluable lesson about what it means to bounce back and never let down on the weekend."
The Big Green travels to Loudonville, N.Y. on Wednesday afternoon to battle Siena in a doubleheader. Game one is set for 2 p.m.
