The hole just keeps getting deeper for the baseball team.
After dropping doubleheaders on the road to Brown and Yale this weekend, Penn has lost nine games in a row and remains winless in the Ivy League.
Coach John Cole and the team did not make themselves available for comment.
The Quakers' starting rotation didn't bring its A-game up to Providence, R.I., and New Haven, Conn., compiling an aggregate earned run average of 14.0.
The Bears' five-run fourth inning against Paul Cusick would do in the Red and Blue in Saturday's opener (a 9-8 loss). Reid Terry followed that up by allowing seven earned runs in under two innings in an 18-11 defeat.
But it was Sunday's opener at Yale that left the most bitter taste in the Quakers' mouths.
Nursing a one-run lead going in the bottom of the seventh (and last) inning, Cole pulled starter Todd Roth in favor of Tom Grandieri after Roth gave up a single and a groundout.
Grandieri, a lefty, was brought in to neutralize left-handed cleanup hitter Trygg Larsson-Danforth. He had no such luck.
Larsson-Danforth smashed a walk-off homer to left center, sending with it any hopes Penn had of recouping its dignity for the weekend. The Quakers would end up losing Game Two, 7-4, as Yale's Andy Megee cruised in his five innings of work, giving up just one run.
Penn now sits squarely in last place in the Gehrig Division, two games back of third-place Cornell.
Having put up 7.25 runs per game this weekend, the Quakers' performance at the plate won't be Cole's top priority.
It is the starting rotation that must be irking him. Even though Roth, the staff's ace, has started slow, Penn's pitchers looked poised to pace the team during the Ivies after solid nonconference play.
But eight games, zero victories and a whole lot of disappointment later, each outing seems more arduous than the last.
For Penn's season to be salvaged, it just might be back to the drawing board.
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