Flipping the calendar from February to March, one is naturally overcome by a feeling of excitement. With March comes baseball season, and the baseball team's schedule begins this weekend.
Tomorrow marks the first game of the Tigers' season. It is a day that head coach Scott Bradley and his team have been eagerly anticipating since last season's disappointing finish, in which Princeton let the Gehrig Division title slip through its fingers to Cornell.
The month of March gives the Tigers an opportunity to sharpen the axe before squaring off against their Ivy League opponents beginning April 1. Princeton will play 17 road games over the course of the month including three doubleheaders.
In an effort to evade the cold, the Tigers start their season in Charleston, S.C., against The Citadel. The two teams will play a four-game series beginning Friday afternoon, with a doubleheader on Saturday and the finale on Sunday. The two programs have only played each other a total of six times – splitting the all-time series 3-3 – and last faced off in 2001.
Princeton will briefly swing through Richmond, Va. for a weekend before traveling back to North Carolina for three different series' over spring break. The month ends with three games against Navy and one against Rutgers.
The first home game and league opener for the Tigers will be a doubleheader against Ivy League champion Harvard. Last season the two teams split their series, 1-1. The Crimson, however, was predicted by "Baseball America" to repeat as Ivy League champion, so Princeton will no doubt be challenged from the get-go in Ivy League play.
The endurance of the Tigers will be tested throughout the season. March's test will have as much to do with the travel distance as with the number of games played. April is when the season really gets tough. The depth of the Princeton lineup will be tested time and again with doubleheaders.
The two games against Harvard on April 1 will be followed by a double header against Dartmouth on April 2. The Big Green swept the Tigers last year, 2-0, so Princeton will be looking for a little redemption in those games.
The next Ivy League matchup will be against Brown, who the Tigers swept last season. They will then finish off their Rolfe Division play against Yale, whom they also swept last season.
Interspersed in Princeton's schedule are some non-league opponents including St. Johns and Northeast Conference favorite Monmouth. But these are single games rather than the series matchups that the Tigers face in their league play.
The second half of April features Gehrig Division play. Princeton will visit Columbia for back-to-back doubleheaders April 15 and 16. The Tigers lost three of four games to the Lions last season and will be looking to regain feline dominance this season.
Princeton does not get a crack at Cornell until April 28, when it visits Ithaca, N.Y., for a double header before returning home to host the Big Red in a doubleheader. This is the most crucial part of the schedule, as last season the Gehrig Division crown came down to the final two games against Cornell.
The Tigers finish off their season with an out-of-league game against Rider in Lawrenceville, N.J., where the Broncos have a 13-7 all-time record against Princeton, before hopefully heading to the playoffs to contend for the Ivy League title.
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