Penn sweeps Cornell to win Ivy League baseball title, advances to NCAA tournament

After playing four games in two days, the Quakers earned their second straight berth to the NCAA Tournament.

Penn baseball earned its second straight berth to the NCAA Tournament after sweeping Cornell on Monday.Read moreHeather Khalifa / Staff Photographer

Published May 20, 2024, 9:25 p.m. ET

Penn is returning to the NCAA baseball tournament.

The Quakers swept Cornell in a pair of elimination games on Monday to win the Ivy League tournament and earn the automatic qualifier. Penn won the first game, 11-9, followed by a 12-6 victory at Yogi Berra Stadium at Montclair State University in Little Falls, N.J.

A year after making history by becoming the first Ivy League baseball team to beat a Southeastern Conference school in the NCAA tournament, the Quakers are going back with an opportunity to make a little more. This time, however, they took the hard way.

The unanimous preseason favorite after running the table the year before, Penn had faltered in league play. With an 11-10 Ivy League record, the Quakers squeaked into the tournament in fourth place, beating out Yale via tiebreaker.

Penn (24-23) upset top-seeded Columbia — which had swept the regular-season series — in its opening game. But the Quakers then fell to Cornell, ending up in the losers’ bracket. They beat out Princeton in an elimination game later that day to stay alive and set up a rematch with the Big Red. Since Cornell had been undefeated in the tournament, Penn needed two wins to earn the qualifier.

Playing four games in two days, the Quakers’ pitching depth was the difference down the stretch. Penn used nine pitchers across the doubleheader.

Senior Cole Zaffiro, who had thrown 113 pitches against Columbia two days before, entered the first game in the seventh inning and fanned six batters to earn the win. A three-run homer by Connor Chavez in the seventh put Penn ahead and forced the deciding game.

Penn third baseman Wyatt Henseler hit his Ivy League single-season record-setting 22nd home run during the second game, while Chavez was 4-for-6 and scored two runs. A five-run outburst in the eighth inning secured the win for the Quakers.