Baseball falls to Pace en route to Ivy League Championship Series

After sealing the Lou Gehrig Division title of the Ivy League, the baseball team will travel to... a place that will be decided today.

Brown and Harvard will play today in a playoff for the Red Rolfe Division title in Cambridge, Mass. That site was determined by a complex formula that compared head-to-head games (the two teams split), then games against the next best team regardless of division. With Princeton being that team, the Crimson will host the game, since Harvard swept the Tigers and the Bears split with them.

But not only will Harvard and Brown be playing for the Rolfe Division Championship, but the two teams will also be playing for home-field advantage during the Ivy League Championship Series held this weekend. Once again that site was decided on by a formula comparing how the three teams fared against each other.

The combined records for each team are as follows — Harvard 4-2, Brown 3-3 and Princeton a dismal 1-3. Since both the Crimson and the Bears have better records than the Tigers, Princeton will not host the ILCS, regardless of the outcome of today's game.

The ILCS will start Saturday with a doubleheader beginning at noon. The home team will bat last the first game, and the Tigers will have the last bat in the second game. Should a third game be necessary, it will be at 1 p.m. Sunday. Whereas a normal doubleheader series would go seven innings, all the games of the ILCS will be the full nine innings.

Before the Tigers could even think about the ILCS, however, they first had to travel to Pleasantville, N.Y., to face Pace University in a make-up game April 28. In the first two games of that three-game series played at Clarke Field, Princeton dismantled the Setters. The Tigers took the first game 9-3 with Pace's three runs coming in the top of the third. In the second, the Setters bounced back. The Tigers managed to stave off their comeback, however, taking a 5-4 win in the bottom of the ninth inning.

This time around, Pace got its revenge. The Setters roughed up the Tigers' pitching staff in a 17-9 victory.

"It was a very poorly played game," sophomore pitcher Brian Biegen said. "It was one of those days when we pitchers couldn't get an out."

Coming off this loss, the Tigers will need to refocus for whoever they play in the ILCS — be it Brown or Harvard — will already have one win under its belt this week and be hungry for another two.