After both teams started their Ivy League campaigns 3–0, the Princeton softball team (12–12 overall, 6–0 Ivy League) and baseball team (7–19, 4–2) each played a series at home last weekend. After a home sweep of Harvard last week, softball stayed in Princeton to play a three-game set against the Yale Bulldogs (17–15, 5–4). Baseball faced off against the Columbia Lions (10–13, 5–1), who finished in first place in the Ivy League regular season last year before falling to the Tigers in the tournament.
Softball Sweeps Again
In their most dominant series yet, the softball team played three straight games against Yale without giving up a single run. Yale’s bats were no match for the starting pair of junior Brielle Wright and sophomore Cassidy Shaw, who combined to throw 18 scoreless innings over the weekend.
Wright took the mound on both Friday and Saturday, pitching the series opener and the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, in which she tossed a ten-strikeout complete game. After the weekend, Wright was awarded with the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week award. In between, Shaw dazzled with nine strikeouts through five innings of work on Saturday.
In Friday’s opener, the Tigers used a small ball to take it to the Bulldogs, scoring six runs without a single run battled in coming off an extra-base hit. The big inning came in the fourth, when a sacrifice fly by junior infielder Abby Hornberger, a single by first-year infielder Jessica Phelps, and a bases-loaded walk by sophomore DH and reigning Ivy League Player of the Week Karis Ford led to a three-run inning. It was all Tigers from there, and the game finished 6–0.
In Saturday’s doubleheader, the Tigers took the first game 9–0 in five innings. The third inning was agonizing in the best way for the Tigers and in the worst way for anyone else watching, as Yale’s pitching simply could not find the strike zone. Fourteen Tigers came to bat, and a whopping seven of them reached base via walk or hit by pitch. During one particularly painful stretch, four straight Tigers walked with the bases loaded to score four more runs.
The second game of the doubleheader was closer, with a narrow 2–0 victory thanks to Wright’s pitching and senior catcher Lauren Pappert’s three-hit game. Pappert drove in the game’s only two runs on a single in the fifth inning that proved to be the difference.
Next weekend, the Tigers head to Hanover for a series against the Dartmouth Big Green (11–11, 4–2), currently second in the Ivy League.
Baseball Struggles vs. Columbia
For the baseball team, a crucial win in Saturday’s second game was sandwiched between two lopsided losses to Columbia. On Saturday morning, the Lions treaded water against senior starting pitcher Andrew D’Alessio for six innings before breaking out against the Tiger bullpen. Columbia tagged sophomore reliever Elliott Eaton for six runs in just over an inning of work, easily outpacing the Tigers’ two runs en route to a 10–2 win. Sunday’s finale went similarly, finishing with a 9–2 score after the Lions scored nine runs in the first six innings against first-years Liam Kinneen and Nick Shenefelt.
In between, the Tigers won a hard-fought battle on Saturday thanks to their pair of Swiss Army Knife-esque aces. Senior Jacob Faulkner and junior Justin Kim, who have been used in multi-inning appearances out of the bullpen for most of the season, combined to pitch nine innings of two-run ball. Head coach Scott Bradley and pitching coach Joe Haumacher have not been shy in their praise of Faulkner and Kim, and on Saturday the two pitchers showed exactly why.
The Tigers’ big break came in the eighth inning thanks to senior outfielder Caden Shapiro. After Columbia broke a 1–1 tie and scored in the top of the frame, the Tigers came to bat needing to make up the deficit. After senior second baseman Jake Koonin led off with a double, Shapiro flipped the lead on a homer over the right field wall.
Given the first Tiger lead of the game, Kim worked around a pair of baserunners to close the game. With that nervy, 3–2 win, the Tigers ensured they’d stay above .500 in Ivy play and remain near the top of the division. Now in a three-way tie for second, the Tigers will look to keep pace near the top this weekend with an away series across the Delaware River against the Penn Quakers (10–12, 4–2).
Joe Uglialoro is an assistant Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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