Big Green facing big test in Ivies

The first full week of Ivy baseball is in the books, but the championship outlook seems hazier than ever.

While Dartmouth was highlighted by Baseball America as the clear preseason favorite in the Rolfe Division — which includes Harvard, Brown and Yale — the first week has shown that the Big Green will not have an easy road towards repeating as Ivy champs.

Four games into the conference slate, Dartmouth (10-10, 2-2 Ivy) sits in a three-way tie for the lead with Harvard and Brown.

After splitting doubleheaders with Princeton and Cornell, the Big Green are just two losses away from matching the number of total conference defeats they suffered last season.

In its Ivy opener Saturday, a 2-0 loss to Cornell, Dartmouth’s bats proved ineffective against Big Red ace Corey Pappel. The junior — who is being looked at extensively by professional scouts — allowed only three hits in a complete game effort.

And while sophomore shortstop Joe Sclafani, the 2009 Ivy Rookie of the Year, recorded two of those hits, he was shut down by Princeton the next day, going a combined 0-6 at the plate during the doubleheader.

The Princeton starting pitchers had their way with the rest of the Big Green starting lineup as well.

Princeton pitcher Zak Hermans allowed only four hits in six innings during the first game, a 2-0 Tigers win, while Langford Stuber allowed seven hits and three runs in the nightcap.

In the second game, the Big Green needed the late-game heroics of freshman Chris O’Dowd to rescue themselves from dropping their first doubleheader since 2006.

Entering the ninth inning trailing 4-3, O’Dowd hit his first collegiate home run to take the game into extra innings. Then, with two outs in the top of the 10th, O’Dowd hit a double to drive in the decisive run, giving Dartmouth a 5-4 victory.

The Big Green’s early performance indicates that last season’s dominance in conference play may be a distant memory. In 2009, the team won the Rolfe division with a conference best 16-4 record and edged out Cornell in the championship series to take the conference. But this year, the race for the Ivy title may be more open than originally thought.

Gehrig Roundup. While Cornell and Princeton showed that they can hang with Dartmouth, their biggest challengers may lie in the Gehrig Divsion.

Penn and Columbia sit in a tie for first with 3-1 records, while the Big Red and the Tigers round out the division with 2-2 records.

Though Penn’s 3-1 turnaround is perhaps the biggest surprise after the Quakers finished at the bottom of the pack with a 5-15 conference record last season, don’t count out Columbia.

After finishing 11-32 overall and 7-13 in the Ivy League in ’09, Columbia (12-12, 3-1 Ivy) has already eclipsed its win total from last season.

Sophomore first baseman Alexander Aurrichio is currently second in batting average, hitting .393 with 22 hits and 10 runs in just 76 at bats. Penn’s Dan Williams sits in first.

The Lions have got off to a fast start in Ivy play. Their back-to-back doubleheaders against Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend will test whether they can stick around at the top for a while or will end up leaving like lambs.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.