FROM CBD NEWS SOURCE
HANOVER, N.H. — Dartmouth Head Baseball Coach Bob Whalen, beginning his 23rd season at the helm of the program, today announced the Big Green schedule for the upcoming 2012 season. In addition to seeking the Green’s fifth consecutive Red Rolfe Division title over the 20-game Ivy League slate, Dartmouth will square off against perennial national powers Louisiana State and UC Irvine among others.
The Big Green will play 15 contests on their home field, Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park, where Dartmouth owns a 42-5 record over the past three seasons. That mark includes a 24-game winning streak that is currently the longest in the country.
To begin the season, Dartmouth will fly south to play at LSU for three games on March 2-4. The Tigers, six-time national champions since 1991 and as recently as 2009, will be playing host to the Green for the first meetings between the two schools on the diamond.
Dartmouth will take a nine-game tour of California — the fifth trip out West since 2000 — during spring break on March 15-24, beginning with a five-game set at Sacramento State. Following a single game at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the Big Green will have a three-game showdown with UC Irvine. The Anteaters are coming of a 2011 campaign in which they went 43-18 and came within one out of reaching the College World Series.
The Northeast portion of the schedule kicks off with the home opener on March 28 against Amherst, the first of four non-conference mid-week home games for the Big Green in 2011. Dartmouth will tangle with Hartford and Boston College on the road to round out the non-conference foes.
Conference play will start with a rematch of the 2011 Ivy Championship Series (ICS) on March 31 with a doubleheader at Princeton as Dartmouth will be seeking to avenge its defeat in the three-game series last spring. The next day, the Big Green head to Ithaca, N.Y., to take on Cornell, which fell to Dartmouth in the ICS in 2009.
After home twinbills against Penn and Columbia the following weekend, the Rolfe Division competition begins against Brown, Yale and Harvard to finish out the month of April. The champions of the Rolfe and Gehrig Divisions will then play a best-of-three series to determine which receives the automatic berth to an NCAA Regional.
A total of 18 letterwinners and six All-Ivy honorees return to the field from a 2011 Dartmouth team that posted a 30-12 record, setting a school record for victories.
2012 Dartmouth Baseball Schedule
