Dartmouth coach Bob Whalen likes to schedule one series each season against a college baseball blue blood, mostly so he can evaluate players against top competition but also to give the Big Green exposure to a big-time atmosphere.
“Memorable experiences that are fun,” the 28th-year coach said on Monday.
What Dartmouth did this past weekend definitely was memorable and fun. The Big Green (4-2) took two of three at Miami for the program’s first series win against a top-25 team. The Hurricanes, who reached the College World Series last year, lost a series to a team outside one of the power five conferences for the first time since May 2009.
“You asked, ‘Did I expect we could play with them?’ The answer is absolutely yes,” Whalen said. “I don’t care who we’re playing or what their rank is, you don’t go into a series with the objective not to embarrass yourself. You go in with the full expectation that you’ll play well and be competitive.”
On Friday, Beau Sulser struck out 10 and walked one in seven innings, and freshman Trevor Johnson doubled on the first pitch of the game and scored the only run in a 1-0 victory.
A 3-2 loss on Saturday ended with Miami scoring the winning run in the bottom of the ninth on the second of two balks in the inning.
“I can tell you that in all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen a game end on a call and not on a ball in play,” Whalen said.
On Sunday, Johnson hit his first career homer on the first pitch of the game, and Michael Danielak pitched seven strong innings in a 5-0 victory .
Dartmouth hasn’t won the Ivy League since 2010, when it made the second of back-to-back appearances in NCAA regionals. Miami has gone to the NCAA tournament every year since 1973.
Whalen has sent three players to the majors since 1990, most notably Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks, the World Series Game 7 starter last fall and major league ERA leader in 2016. Miami coach Jim Morris has developed 27 big-leaguers since 1994.
The Hurricanes won 50 games in 2016 but are 4-6 and out of the rankings this week. They batted .194 with one extra-base hit against Dartmouth, and they’re batting .184 and averaging 2.7 runs through 10 games.
A look around the country:
Top-Ranked TCU: The No. 1 Horned Frogs (10-1) beat ranked opponents in Mississippi, Texas A&M and LSU in Houston over the weekend and are off to their best start since 1985. The best of those was the 11-10, 15-inning win over A&M on Saturday. TCU rallied from five runs down in the ninth to force extra innings and won on Ryan Merrill’s RBI double. TCU and A&M combined for 46 strikeouts — 26 by the Frogs and 20 by the Aggies.
Big Ten’s Best? Michigan (9-3), as high as No. 19, is in the rankings for the first time this season after winning seven of eight on its spring-break trip to California. The Wolverines lost 1-0 to UCLA in the Dodgertown Classic on Friday, then beat Southern California and San Diego. Their pitching staff has surrendered just one earned run the last three games.
No-Hitters: Parker Rigler threw Kansas State’s first no-hitter since 1991 in a 14-0 win over Eastern Illinois on Sunday. Four Washington State pitchers combined for the school’s first no-hitter since 1985 in a 7-3 win over Stephen F. Austin on Sunday. Radford’s Danny Hrbek tossed the first nine-inning no-hitter in school history, beating Quinnipiac 4-0 on Saturday.
Duck Dominance: Oregon took two of three at home against Mississippi State, with junior lefty David Peterson starting things off by striking out a career-high 17 in a 1-0 win on Friday. The 17 Ks were the most by an Oregon pitcher since the program re-started in 2009.