Ivy Aims at Stake This Weekend for Tigers at Columbia

Standing atop the Ivy League at 14-4, the Princeton softball team will aim to clinch the Ivy League title and its role as host of the Ivy League Playoff Series this weekend when it heads to Columbia for the final three-game series of the Ivy season.

at Columbia, Saturday, 12:30 p.m. DH | ESPN+ Game 1 | ESPN+ Game 2 | Live Stats
at Columbia, Sunday, 12:30 p.m. | ESPN+ | Live Stats

League teams enter Friday still needing to play anywhere from three to nine games before the final league game is played on May 8, but three teams are in front in the race for the two Playoff Series berths, and the Princeton-Columbia and Dartmouth-Harvard series this weekend will do the most to clarify the Playoff Series location and teams. Princeton stands 14-4, 1 1/2 games in front of both Harvard (11-4) and Dartmouth (11-4). No other team has fewer than eight league losses. The team or teams that finish the 21-game Ivy season with the best league record will be the Ivy League champions while the Playoff Series is for the league's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.

Princeton stands a sweep of Columbia and one Dartmouth loss over its last six league games from clinching Playoff Series hosting duties. In that scenario, only Princeton and Harvard could get to 17-4, and Princeton has the head-to-head tiebreaker over Harvard because of the Tigers' head-to-head series win in March. Princeton needs to finish in front of Dartmouth in order to host because the Big Green took two of three from Princeton when the teams met early in April.

The Tigers enter the series hitting a league-best .289 on the season. Serena Starks and Sophia Marsalo co-lead the Ivy with 42 hits on the season, and Starks is one of three Ivy Leaguers co-leading the league with 21 RBI. Allison Ha has an Ivy-best 13 doubles on the season. In the circle, Princeton has two of the Ivy's top three strikeout leaders on the season, with Ali Blanchard fanning an Ivy-best 131 and Alexis Laudenslager third at 107, just one strikeout behind Dartmouth's Brooke Plonka at 108. Laudenslager has an Ivy-best 2.21 ERA this season.

Columbia is fourth in the Ivy in both team batting average (.247) and team ERA (3.86), one spot behind Princeton's 3.13 team ERA. Jordan Hill (6-10 W-L, 3.24 ERA), Raquel Reyes (4-4, 3.83) and Kaia McCaul (2-8, 4.58) have thrown 220 of the team's 223 innings on the season. Abby Stuart (.376) is the lone Lion hitting above .300 for the season.

Princeton leads the all-time series against Columbia 43-19. The Lions took two of three in both the 2018 and 2019 series, and Princeton took three of four in the final season of divisional play in 2017.

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