Now at 21 Games, New Ivy Season to Begin Saturday at Brown

Saturday, March 24

Providence, R.I.

12:30 PM

Princeton University

Brown

Danielle Dockx had a three-run home run against Brown last season.

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

Now at 21 Games, New Ivy Season to Begin Saturday at Brown

March 23, 2018 | Softball

The first visit to Brown's turf-covered softball field will come earlier than planned for the Princeton softball team.

The Tigers, who were due to host Brown for a three-game series this weekend under the Ivy League's new scheduling format, will instead go to Brown with Princeton's Class of 1895 Field unplayable due to this week's snowstorm. Princeton last played in Providence in 2016, splitting a two-game series, before the Bears came to Princeton last season, where Princeton won both games. Brown's field underwent renovation prior to the 2017 season.

The series will begin Saturday with a 12:30 p.m. doubleheader and continue Sunday with a 12:30 p.m. single game. There won't be Ivy League Network coverage, but live stats will be available via the links on Princeton's schedule page.

Half the league already played Ivy games under the new plan of seven Ivy weekends, with Columbia visiting Penn and Harvard visiting Yale last weekend. The road teams each took two of the three games. Now, Princeton and Brown begin their run, which will include seven consecutive weekends of three-game series. The top two teams at the end of the circuit will meet on the second weekend of May for the Ivy League Championship Series, which will determine the Ivy League champion and NCAA bid recipient, which has been Princeton the last two seasons. Since 2006, the league had been split into North and South divisions, with Princeton playing two weekends against the North teams, facing Harvard and Dartmouth each in a doubleheader one weekend and Brown and Yale on the other weekend, and three weekends of four games apiece against fellow South teams for a total of 20 games.

Princeton enters the Ivy season at 2-14, having gone through its annual pre-conference travel stretch against mainly teams whose seasons began the second weekend of February. Princeton's last pre-conference game, a 7-4 win at Central Florida, dropped the Knights to 18-12, nearly double the number of games Princeton has played.

The Tigers have recent experience turning rough pre-conference schedules into outstanding Ivy seasons. Last year, Princeton was 7-11 before the Ivy opener, which began a 15-5 league season. In 2016, Princeton was 6-17 before Ivy play opened and the Tigers went on to go 14-6, winning the league both times.

Brown has played fewer games than Princeton, entering the league slate at 5-9 and with one common opponent to Princeton so far in George Washington. The Bears lost to GW once in D.C., while the Colonials beat Princeton three times last weekend, also in D.C. The Bears have some strong statistical rankings as the Ivy season begins, ranking third nationally in doubles per game at 1.86 and ninth in triples per game at 0.43. Two players in the top 30 nationally power the Bears' doubles ranking, with Meghan Wimmer 11th at 0.43 and Cat Seitz 30th at 0.38. Wimmer also ranks 13th in slugging percentage at 0.930, 18th in on-base percentage at 0.558, and 25th in batting average at 0.465. Senior Katie Orona (1-4, 6.73) and junior Wimmer (3-2, 6.46) have combined to throw 50 1/3 of the team's 91 2/3 innings.

After graduating its two lead starting pitchers last season in Erica Nori '17 and Claire Klausner '17, Princeton now has rookie Allie Reynolds and senior Ashley LaGuardia in those roles. Reynolds had a no-hitter against Florida A&M during the spring break trip, the program's first seven-inning no-hitter for a freshman since 1988, and LaGuardia had the win over UCF last time out. Junior Keeley Walsh (.375) leads four Tigers hitting above .300 with Princeton at .254 as a team.

Princeton holds an all-time series lead over Brown 53-15-1 and has won or split every doubleheader against the Bears since 1998. The current Tiger seniors have won five of their six games against Brown, seeing two very different games a year ago at '95 Field. Princeton got a 4-3 win in the opener, scoring all four runs over the first two innings thanks to a Kaylee Grant two-RBI double, a Kaitlyn Waslawski hit-by-pitch and an Allison Harvey RBI single, but Brown used three solo home runs between the fourth, fifth and sixth innings to make it a one-run game. Kaitlin Okimoto had two of those and Annie McGregor had one, and both players are back this season. In game two, Princeton won 10-0 in five innings. Now-graduated Marissa Reynolds '17 went 3 for 3, but six other Tigers, all of whom are back this season, had hits, and Walsh and Megan Donahey had two RBIs apiece with Danielle Dockx hitting a three-run home run. Orona and Klausner dueled in game one, and Wimmer and Nori met in game two.

The Tigers will play at Harvard next weekend before what will now be their home-opening weekend, April 7-8 against Dartmouth.