Move over, March Madness.
While most of the buzz about Penn sports over the past week has been the men’s basketball team’s trip to March Madness, Penn baseball had a big week, including their start to Ivy play.
Penn vs. East Carolina
Before conference play began, the Red and Blue traveled to Greenville, S.C. (coincidentally, the same place where men’s basketball fell to Illinois during March Madness) to face the East Carolina University Pirates, falling 2-1 in a three-game series from March 13-15.
The Pirates (15-9-1, 2-1 AAC) were the second high-profile non-conference matchup for the Quakers (7-10, 3-0 Ivy), after kicking the season off against then-24th ranked Texas A&M. East Carolina, while currently not ranked in the top 25, rose to as high as 24th earlier this year and boasted wins against two top-25 opponents in North Carolina and Coastal Carolina, and the Pirates showed off this prestige in the first of three games on the series.
Senior right-hand pitcher Jake Moss opened the series on the mound and was met with a four-run first inning for the Pirates, putting Penn behind the eight-ball early. But the Quaker offense fought back, scoring three runs thanks to an ECU error — a single from freshman infielder Jay Secretarski, and a home run from junior infielder Nick Spaventa — and the score was evened out to 4-3 by the bottom of the third.
But that would be the closest Penn would get to victory. At the bottom of the fourth, East Carolina put the game away with a monstrous nine-run inning, chasing Moss from the game to put an end to the Quakers’ comeback bid. The Pirates would score four more before the game ended in a 17-3 loss for Penn.
After the devastating loss, it was important for junior relief pitcher Marty Coyne to set the tone early for Penn in the next game. Coyne went eight shutout innings against the Pirates’ offense, allowing only four hits in the process. The game remained scoreless entering the ninth until junior outside fielder Gavin Collins broke the tie with an RBI double, scoring fellow junior outside fielder Gavin Degnan in what would be Penn’s only run in the game.
Coach John Yurkow made the call to the bullpen and sent sophomore right-hand pitcher Connor Darling in to close the game. Despite hitting two batters, Darling got the job done, and Penn tied the series at 1-1 with a 1-0 win.
The last game of the series was dominated by power, with each team swatting three home runs in a game that went to extra innings. After the Pirates scored two runs in the eighth to tie the game at seven, a tenth-inning solo shot from ECU would send the Quakers home with just one win on the weekend.
Penn vs. Lehigh
Taking one game from the reigning American Conference champions was nothing to sneeze at, but the Quakers returned to Philadelphia with a 3-10 record during non-conference play. A final tune-up game against Lehigh would be the Quakers’ last chance to improve their record before Ivy play began with a three-game set against Dartmouth.
Coming off a back-and-forth game, Penn’s 15-2 win over the Mountain Hawks (5-15, 2-4 Patriot) ensured the team carried as much momentum as possible into their conference opener. In a bullpen game for the Quakers, five pitchers combined to go seven innings, allowing just two runs. The offense would leave no doubt either, jumped out to a 6-0 lead after three innings in Penn’s fourth win of 2026.
Penn vs. Dartmouth
The midweek win set the Quakers up for an important start to the Ivy League season, when Moss took the mound again against the Big Green over a weekend series from March 21-22 that ended in a 3-0 Penn sweep. Though Moss again struggled to start, allowing three runs in the second, he settled into a strong outing, going seven and a third innings and holding Dartmouth (3-11, 0-3 Ivy) off the scoreboard after the second. Penn responded to the Dartmouth surge in the bottom of the second, with RBI hits from freshman Jack Warner and Collins tying the game at three. The Quakers would run away with it from there, taking the lead in the fifth before adding four more insurance runs in the eighth, finishing their opener with an 8-3 victory.
Coyne would start another game two, this time coming off a win, but his performance was nearly identical. After escaping a bases-loaded, no-out jam with only one run in the first, Coyne would finish six strong innings to follow up his strong start the previous weekend.
Penn responded to Dartmouth’s early offense with three runs to tie the game and take the lead — a lead they would not relinquish for the rest of the game. Senior utility player Jarrett Pokrovsky’s home run in the eighth was the final run of the game, securing a Quaker series victory over the Big Green.
With a chance to sweep the weekend to start Ivy play, senior right-hand pitcher Thomas Shurtleff took the mound, and for a third straight game, Penn fell behind early. After a two-run second inning for Dartmouth, the Quakers would respond with two of their own in the fourth to tie the game before Spaventa would hit a solo home run to give Penn the lead in the sixth. Shurtleff would leave the game with this lead, going six strong frames with two earned runs, and another flawless bullpen outing would lead Penn to its third win of the weekend.
The Quakers put together one of the more difficult slates possible for preseason play, and their record suffered as a result. However, the adversity faced against stronger competition is proving to pay dividends early, as Penn started their run to return to the top of the Ivy League with a sweep.
