.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Princeton Baseball Heads to Brown and Yale
April 07, 2006 | Baseball
April 7, 2006
PRINCETON - The Princeton baseball team continues its Ivy League schedule on Saturday and Sunday with doubleheaders scheduled at Brown and Yale. Last season, Princeton swept both opponents and the Tigers will look for a similar fate this year to help them climb in the league standings.
After starting the season 3-3, Princeton is 1-13-1 in its last 15 games and enters this weekend winless in seven games. The lone win came against Navy and the tie came against Rutgers. Harvard and Dartmouth recently swept Princeton in doubleheaders in the Ivy League season-opening weekend. Princeton last played on Tuesday at Monmouth and lost 11-1. Monmouth took advantage of pitching control problems in the first inning to jump to a big lead and held on from there in the win.
Last season Princeton opened the Ivy season by facing Yale and Brown and reeled off four-straight victories in the games, which were played on the road because of weather problems, although Princeton was considered the home team for all four games. The first day at Yale, the Tigers won two one-run games, and the next day at Brown, Princeton posted wins of 4-0 and 12-6.
The Princeton pitching staff continues to lead the way for the Tigers as Princeton has the lowest team ERA in the Ivy League at 4.86 and the lowest opponent batting average at .291. Yale's 6.37 ERA ranks third and Brown's 8.83 ERA ranks eighth. Brown (.318) and Yale (.288), however, rank first and second in team batting average. Princeton (.258) ranks seventh.
Offensively the Tigers had a productive day on Sunday against Dartmouth, hitting two home runs and scoring 14 combined runs. Sophomore Micah Kaplan raised his batting average nearly 100 points over the weekend and freshman Dan Degeorge hit the first two home runs of his college career. Junior Aaron Prince was held hitless in both games against Harvard, snapping his 12-game hitting streak to start the 2006 season. Those 13 games, coupled with the five-game hit streak he finished 2005 with gave him the longest hitting streak in Princeton baseball history at 18 games, surpassing the record of 16 games set by William MacCoy in 1940. Princeton started a new streak on Sunday with two hits in each game against Dartmouth and has hit in his last three games.
Prince is now hitting .370 on the season to lead Princeton. He is one of four Princeton batters above the .300 line, the others are senior Andrew Salini (.321), senior Zach Wendkos (.347) and Kaplan (.356).
Saturday's opponent, Brown, is 3-13 overall, but 3-1 in the Ivy League after taking two from Penn and splitting with Columbia last weekend. Brown has played a tough schedule though, with losses at Florida State, Vanderbilt and VMI.
Yale is the only team in the Ivy League with a winning overall record at 14-11. The Bulldogs are also 3-1 in league play. Yale, which hosts Cornell on Saturday, has wins against Albany, Marist, Davidson, Holy Cross and Northern Iowa to its credit. The Bulldogs and Tigers share one opponent, Richmond, which Princeton swept and Yale won one of three games against.