Cornell Takes Series Opener, Tigers Stand Saturday Sweep from Ivy Title

Friday, May 3

Princeton, N.J.

3:30 PM

Princeton University

24-15, 12-7

Cornell

8-27, 5-14

Cornell

Princeton

Photo by: Shelley M. Szwast

Cornell Takes Series Opener, Tigers Stand Saturday Sweep from Ivy Title

May 03, 2024 | Softball

Box Score

The Princeton softball team needed two wins over Cornell this weekend to win an Ivy League title and host the Ivy League Tournament next weekend, and the Tigers will enter Saturday with those two wins still on their to-do list.

A three-run fifth inning allowed Cornell to take the lead and the Big Red added two in the seventh to help survive a seventh-inning rally and defeat the Tigers 6-4 on Friday afternoon at Strubing Field.

Princeton and Cornell will play a 12:30 p.m. doubleheader on Saturday. If the Tigers, who stand at 12-7 in the Ivy, win two, they'll finish tied with Harvard and Yale and possibly Dartmouth, sharing the Ivy League title with the two or three other teams that finish 14-7. Princeton would win the tiebreaker over either the three-team or four-team group based on wins against the tied teams and would host the Ivy League Tournament based on that. If Princeton and Cornell split on Saturday, Princeton would be in the Ivy tournament but would go to Yale to play in it. A Cornell sweep would open the door for Brown or Columbia to make the field if they can sweep their weekend series.

A single, an error and a walk loaded the bases for Princeton in the first, but the Big Red got out of it with just a run allowed on a Karis Ford sacrifice fly that scored the Lauren Sablone base hit. Cornell answered in the second inning when a walk and a base hit put two on for a fly ball to score a run and tie it at 1-1.

The tie stayed until the fifth, when two walks, a hit and a pair of doubles netted the three runs for Cornell to take a 4-1 lead, and the Big Red pushed the lead to 6-1 in the seventh on two hits and a double.

Princeton staged a final rally in the seventh, using an Abby Hornberger one-out double, a Sonia Zhang base hit, and a Sablone triple on which she scored on a throwing error on the same play to score three times and make it 6-4. Princeton had the tying run at the plate after a Julia Dumais double, but a ground ball preserved the win for Cornell.