The Penn baseball team's matchup against Lehigh yesterday was postponed. If you've ever been through an April in Philadelphia -- and this is only my first -- it isn't that much of a surprise.
What is surprising is that the Penn coaching staff and Athletic Department moved quickly to add another game to the Quakers' schedule, to be played next week at St. Joseph's.
If you're looking for reasons why the Red and Blue have struggled to a 2-8 start to the Ivy League season, there are many. Some of those reasons involve talent.
But one factor beyond the control of the athletes is the schedule that the Quakers have played.
They have not played enough games. The teams they have played are not very good for the most part. And it's showed in Penn's performance in the Ivy League thus far.
Yesterday's Lehigh rainout marked the fifth time this year that the Quakers have rolled out the tarp rather than play a game. Only their doubleheader against Brown on Sunday, April 4 was rescheduled, and it will be played today, weather permitting.
I know what you're thinking. This is the Northeast. If it didn't rain a lot, then maybe the Baseball America top 25 would not be the exclusive property of California and southern schools.
But most schools in the Northeast appear to be doing a little better at scheduling games.
According to senior co-captain Mike Goldblatt, Penn has played the fewest games in all of Division I baseball the past two years. This will be the fourth straight season that the Red and Blue will play less than 40 games.
The only other team that is in this situation is Penn's Ivy League rival, Dartmouth, which is 4-2 in the Ivy League thus far.
So you ask, how has the Big Green been able to overcome its dearth of non-league games while the Quakers have not?
Once again, talent is part of it. But aside from that, the competition Dartmouth played earlier in the season is far superior to that of Penn's.
The Big Green has faced Florida, ranked No. 24 last week by Baseball America. And Dartmouth is not alone among Ivy League teams scheduling top programs.
Three other Ivy schools have faced competition from this week's Division I top 25.
Brown faced Florida as well as this week's No. 23, Virginia. Princeton has faced No. 20 North Carolina and perennial power Duke. Yale faced No. 6 South Carolina earlier in the season.
Two other schools in the Ivy League -- Harvard and Cornell -- have taken road trips to compete against solid Division I schools Texas Tech and UC Santa Barbara, respectively.
As for the Quakers, their two most challenging foes were South Florida, 7-5 in Conference USA, and Division II powerhouse Rollins.
These two opponents represent the only teams with a winning record that Penn played in the non-league schedule all season. Other teams on the schedule included Division II doormat West Virginia Wesleyan and 2-21 Long Island University.
This is not to say that the Red and Blue would have turned into the '27 Yankees had they faced better competition. Even a winning record in the league was probably out of the question.
But the Quakers would be a more competitive ball club right now if they had played more games against top competition. The young pitchers would have received precious experience. Hitters like juniors Alex Blagojevich and Casey Adler, who have just begun to find their stride, would have gotten untracked earlier.
Make no mistake: The Quakers are an undermanned baseball team in many ways this season. But the coaching staff and the Athletic Department did the team no favors with the schedule that it put together.
