Dartmouth Opens Ivy Play at Penn and Columbia

	DARTMOUTH BIG GREEN (10-6, 0-0 Ivy)	vs.	PENN QUAKERS (9-9, 0-0 Ivy)
			COLUMBIA LIONS (3-13, 0-0 Ivy)
Meiklejohn Stadium • Philadelphia, Pa. • April 1 / Robertson Field at Satow Stadium • New York, N.Y. • April 2

THE SERIES
DARTMOUTH	PENN
Notes \| Stats \| Twitter	Notes \| Stats \| Twitter
April 1 • Game 1 • Noon Audio: ILDN \| Live Stats
RHP Michael Danielak (4-0, 1.98)	RHP Jake Cousins (2-1, 1.75)
April 1 • Game 2 • ~2:30 p.m. Audio: ILDN \| Live Stats
RHP Cole O'Connor (1-1, 3.92)	LHP Mike Reitcheck (2-1, 1.15)

THE SERIES
DARTMOUTH	COLUMBIA
Notes \| Stats \| Twitter	Notes \| Stats \| Twitter
April 2 • Game 1 • Noon Video: ILDN \| Live Stats
RHP Beau Sulser (2-0, 0.00)	TBA
April 2 • Game 2 • ~2:30 p.m. Video: ILDN \| Live Stats
RHP Jack Fossand (0-1, 5.06)	RHP Ty Wiest (0-1, 2.65)

Ivy League Play is Here
This is the 25th season of Ivy League divisional play with Dartmouth in search of its 12th Rolfe Division title and third conference crown in that span. After missing out on the Ivy League Championship Series last year for the first time since 2007, thanks to a one-run loss in the divisional playoff at Yale, the Big Green begin the climb to the top of the standings with doubleheaders this weekend at Penn and Columbia.

Spring Break in Review
•   Dartmouth went 6-4 over spring break, culminating with a series victory at No. 26 UCF.
•   The Big Green offense performed well on the trip, hitting .311/.394/.414 as a team. Senior Michael Ketchmark led the squad by hitting .310/.500/.692 with 16 hits, five doubles, two homers, eight runs and 10 RBIs.
•   Five other regulars hit at least .300 over the 10 games, including all three outfielders (Matt Feinstein (.342), Trevor Johnson (.324), Kyle Holbrook (.317).
•   Michael Danielak won both of his starts, first beating The Citadel with eight strikeouts in 7.1 innings of a 10-9 triumph, then topping No. 26 UCF with eight more whiffs in eight innings of one-run ball in a 4-1 victory. He was named Ivy League Pitcher of the Week for his latter effort.
•   Johnson led off that win with a home run, the second time he went yard as the first batter of the contest (also in a 5-0 win at No. 17 Miami).
•   Chris Burkholder picked up saves in both of the wins over the Knights, giving him five already on the season, surpassing his total in his first three years. No other Ivy Leaguer has more than two.
•   Dartmouth put up 19 runs in a slugfest win over Chicago, its most since scoring 22 against Yale two years ago. Ketchmark had a career-high five hits with three doubles and a homer.
•   The Big Green's first four losses this year were all by one run until Bethune-Cookman hung a 9-2 defeat on Dartmouth this past Wednesday.
•   Cole O'Connor, who has walked exactly one batter and struck out exactly two in each of his four starts this season, earned his first career victory in a 7-2 win at The Citadel to start the trip.

Last Time Against the Quakers
Dartmouth and Penn split a doubleheader in Hanover last year with the Big Green squeaking out a 2-1, walkoff victory in game one before the Quakers pounded out an 11-1 win in the nightcap. Kyle Holbrook drove in the winning run in the seventh with one of the shortest sacrifice flies you'll ever see caught. The second baseman caught the shallow pop behind second base and Nick Ruppert made a mad dash for the plate, making a winner out of Duncan Robinson who had struck out eight in his seven-inning complete game. Penn salvaged a split thanks to its 14-hit attack with three home runs.

Overall Record vs. Penn
•   The Big Green have a slim lead in the all-time series against Penn with an 87-84-1 record.
•   In the past 19 seasons, each team has seven doubleheader sweeps to their credit while splitting the two games just five times.
•   Coach Whalen is 28-22 against Penn during his tenure, including a 4-2 mark in extra innings.
•   Penn's Meiklejohn Stadium opened in 2000, and Dartmouth sports a 5-11 record there. Every series had been a sweep for either team at the venue until the last encounter in 2015 when they traded 4-3 decisions.

Scouting the Quakers
•   Penn may just be a .500 team entering the weekend, but it is the hottest team in the league having won its last seven games, the last five of which have come against Lafayette.
•   The offense is paced by first baseman Sean Phelan at .369/.432/.446 while last year's Ivy League Player of the Year, Tim Graul, leads the team with 15 RBIs.
•   Last year the Quakers led the conference with 32 home runs, but this year they have just four thus far, two off the bat of Matt McGeagh.
•   Pitching has been the strength of the team with a staff ERA of 3.58. Billy Lescher and Jake Nelson make for a strong tandem out of the pen, combining for a 1.54 ERA and four saves in 23.1 innings.
•   The Penn defense has a .965 fielding percentage with 24 errors while throwing out 8-of-31 base stealers.

Probable Starting Pitchers
•   Taking the mound in the opener for the Big Green will be RHP Michael Danielak (4-0, 1.98). He has won all four of his starts this season and allowed more than one run just once. Penn will pit RHP Jake Cousins (2-1, 1.75), who is making his first career appearance against Dartmouth despite entering the season with 129 career innings.
•   For the second game, Dartmouth will run RHP Cole O'Connor (1-1, 3.92) out to the mound. He has not allowed more than three earned runs in any of his four starts this season. The Quakers have LHP Mike Reitcheck (2-1, 1.15) lined up to try to duplicate his success from two years ago when he threw seven scoreless innings against Dartmouth.

Last Time Against the Lions
Dartmouth swept a home doubleheader from Columbia last year, winning the opener, 3-1, and the finale, 7-6. Matt Feinstein singled home the go-ahead run in the fifth (one of his two RBIs all season), and Beau Sulser picked up the win with six innings of one-run ball while Chris Burkholder pitched a perfect seventh for the save. Michael Ketchmark and Justin Fowler homered in the nightcap, but the Big Green trailed the Lions, 6-4, entering the ninth. Ketchmark singled home one run, the tying run trotted home on a bases-loaded walk and Fowler provided the walk-off hit with a single over the center fielder's head, making a winner out of reliever Patrick Peterson who had twirled two shutout innings of relief.

The Overall Record vs. Columbia
•   Dartmouth owns a fairly sizable advantage in the all-time series, 107-77.
•   This has been perhaps the Ivy League's biggest rivalries over the past decade as these two have squared off in the Ivy League Championship Series five times. The Lions beat the Green in Hanover in 2008, two games to one, and Dartmouth returned the favor in 2010 on Columbia's home turf. In 2014 and '15, the Lions swept the series in New York before prevailing in three games in 2016.
•   Dartmouth head coach Bob Whalen has a 41-26 mark in games against Columbia.
•   Columbia has been playing on FieldTurf at its home park — Robertson Field at Satow Stadium — since 2008. The Big Green are 10-8 on it and 18-16 in New York since the divisional format was instituted for the Ivy League in 1993.

Scouting the Lions
•   Columbia has played the seventh-most difficult schedule in Division I as rated by Boyd's World with 11 straight losses before beating Tulane once. Last weekend, the Lions split four games at Penn State.
•   While the bats have produced a .237/.340/.317 line, four starters are hitting better than .300, led by third baseman Randell Kanemaru at .373 with three homers (half the team's total) and 13 RBIs.
•   With the difficult schedule, the pitching staff has been beaten up a bit thus far with an ERA of 6.70 with more walks (98, 6.6 per nine innings) than strikeouts (87).
•   Ian Burns has been the most reliable reliever with a 2.61 ERA over 10.1 innings in six appearances.
•   The defense has committed 24 errors in 16 games for a .958 fielding percentage, but one-third of opposing base stealers have been gunned down.

Probable Starting Pitchers
•   Senior RHP Beau Sulser (2-0, 0.00) will climb the hill for the first game against the Lions. It will be his first appearance since his seven shutout innings in a 1-0 win at then-17th-ranked Miami on March 3. Columbia has not identified their starter, and I couldn't even hazard a guess as to who it will be.
•   The final game of the weekend will pit Big Green RHP Jack Fossand (0-1, 5.06), making his third start of the year, against Lions RHP Ty Wiest (0-1, 2.65), who faced Dartmouth three times two years ago and posted a 2.70 ERA in 6.2 innings.

What's Up Next
Dartmouth has one more road game on its plate, Wednesday at Holy Cross at 3 p.m., before finally playing its home opener next weekend in Ivy League doubleheaders against Princeton on Saturday and Cornell on Sunday at noon both days.

Strong Through Spring Break
Dartmouth posted a 10-6 record through the end of spring break, including series victories over two ranked teams in Miami (17th at the time) and UCF (26th). The Big Green had not won more than two games over ranked teams in any season previously, and the .625 winning percentage has only been bettered five times in the past 50 years. The last two teams to do so were the 2011 (9-4) and 2013 (11-1) squads, the only two in Dartmouth history to win at least 30 games in a season.

On the Offensive
The Dartmouth bats have markedly improved from last year, posting a team slash line of .306/.401/.412 while scoring 6.4 runs per game through 16 contests. Last year the Big Green produced less than four runs on average, their lowest total in 24 years.

On the (Ketch)mark
Senior first baseman Michael Ketchmark leads Dartmouth's robust offense in nine categories thus far — average (.381), OBP (.480), slugging (.667), doubles (7), homers (3), runs (13), RBIs (14), walks (12) and total bases (42).

Series Win at Ranked Team, Part II
Dartmouth took two of three games at then-26th-ranked UCF on March 24-26, marking its second series victory over a ranked team this season. Back on March 3-5, the Big Green won twice in the three-game series at Miami, ranked 17th at the time. The four victories over ranked opponents double the most in a season in program history

Pitcher, Rookie of the Week
At the end of spring break, Dartmouth had two players recognized by the Ivy League office as its Pitcher and Rookie of the Week in senior RHP Michael Danielak and freshman LHP Michael Parsons. Danielak merely kept No. 26 UCF in check, yielding one run over eight innings on six hits with eight strikeouts and nary a walk to earn a 4-1 victory. Parsons also provided some big innings on the mound against the Knights, hurling three scoreless stanzas in the opening game to preserve a 3-3 tie as the Big Green went on to win in the ninth, 4-3.

For the first time in eight years, Dartmouth had two consecutive Rookies of the Week as Trevor Johnson won the honor on March 20. In 2009, Joe Sclafani won the award on back-to-back weeks. The last time two different Big Green players took home the trophy was in 2004 (Will Bashelor and Stephen Perry).

Not Everything Roses
While Dartmouth won the first two games at No. 26 UCF, the third game was, shall we say, forgettable. The host Knights piled on 15 runs while four pitchers combined for a shutout, handing the Green their worst loss in seven years, and worst shutout loss since an elimination game at the NCAA Regionals in 2009.

Burkholder Should Be Burksaver
Senior Chris Burkholder spent most of his first three seasons with the Big Green as a key member of the bullpen, generally setting up the team's closer yet still earning four saves of his own. This year he has been thrust into the closer's role and has thrived with five saves (nobody in the Ivy League has more than two) in Dartmouth's first 10 victories, including the last two at No. 26 UCF.

Milestone Watch
•   Michael Ketchmark collected his 100th career hit in the loss at Bethune-Cookman on March 22.
•   Dustin Shirley will play in his 100th game in the opener at Penn, and he needs just seven more hits to reach 100 for his career.
•   Freshman Henry Eilen notched his first collegiate hit in the final game at No. 26 UCF.
•   Sophomore Zac Bygum, and freshmen Eric Stolt and Alec Vaules all made their collegiate debuts on the mound at Bethune-Cookman on March 22, while rookie Tyler Fagler did so the following day against Southern Maine with a scoreless inning, and Sean McGowan got his first at-bat.

Bases (Exp)Loaded
When opposing pitchers have loaded the bases this season, Dartmouth hitters have made them pay dearly. As a team, the Big Green is hitting an even .500 (12-for-24) with 27 RBIs when the bags are full. Matt Feinstein (3-for-3, 2B, 5 RBIs) and Dustin Shirley (2-for-2, 2 2Bs, 2 SF, 6 RBIs) have been especially effective in such situations at the plate.

The Art of the Steal
It has been more than a decade (2006) since Dartmouth averaged more than one stolen base per game. But after 16 contests this year, the Big Green have 20 stolen bases, led by freshman Trevor Johnson with seven in eight tries. Since that 2006 season, no Dartmouth player has had more than 11 to his name in any campaign.

Schedules