PHILADELPHIA - The University of Pennsylvania baseball team plays its penultimate Ivy League series of the 2023 season this weekend with a trip up to Ithaca for a critical showdown with Cornell.
 
The Quakers are currently tied atop the Ivy League standings with Columbia, against whom they wrap the regular season in two weeks from Tommy Lasorda Field at Meiklejohn Stadium.
 
Penn (23-13, 11-4 Ivy) vs. Cornell (6-23, 5-10 Ivy)
Friday, April 28 | 11:00 a.m. | WATCH | LIVE STATS
 
Penn (23-13, 11-4 Ivy) vs. Cornell (6-23, 5-10 Ivy)
Friday, April 28 | 2:00 p.m. (approx.) | WATCH | LIVE STATS
 
Penn (23-13, 11-4 Ivy) vs. Cornell (6-23, 5-10 Ivy)
Saturday, April 29 | 11:00 AM | WATCH | LIVE STATS
 
The Series: Cornell
Friday's opener marks the 296th meeting between the Big Red and the Quakers dating back to 1888. Penn holds the advantage with a 169-124-2 record, including a 17-8 mark under W. Joseph Blood head coach John Yurkow.
 
Previewing Penn
Penn has won its last four Ivy series after dropping two of three to Harvard five weeks ago.  
 
Cole Zaffiro (1.19), Owen Coady (1.80) and Ryan Dromboski (2.05) are 1st, 3rd, and 5th, respectively in ERA in conference play with Dromboski (41), Coady (36), and Zaffiro (31) ranking 2nd, 3rd and 7th in strikeouts.
 
Ben Miller (.373), Cole Palis (.354), and Jackson Appel (.333) are all hitting over .300 with Wyatt Henseler joining the trio in the Top 10 in the league in OPS (Appel, 1.092, 5th), (Palis, 1.032, 7th), (Miller, .997, 8th), (Henseler, .962, 10th).
 
Previewing Cornell
The Big Red's Ivy League season has been somewhat of a puzzler. They opened conference play taking two of three from Yale, currently 1.5 games out of an Ivy League Tournament spot. After dropping two of three against Columbia and suffering a sweep at the hands of Brown (currently four games out of a Tournament spot), Cornell took two of three from Harvard (currently holding the final Ivy Tournament spot), before being swept by Princeton last weekend.
 
The team enters the final weekend of the month 6-23 on the season, and 5-10 in Ivy play.
 
Nathan Waugh's .333 average leaves him as the only Big Red batter hitting over .280 this season, with the squad hitting just .242.
 
Noah Keller and Ethan Hamill have started in all five Ivy series this season, Keller pitching to a 3.54 ERA and Hamill pitching to an 8.18 ERA. Keller turned in his two best starts of the season against Brown and Harvard, going seven innings and striking out seven in each outing allowing just three runs combined. Hamill went five innings and allowed just two runs and two hits in his outing against the Crimson.