NEW YORK — Columbia Baseball (7-12, 1-2 IVY) dropped Sunday's rubber game of its Ivy League opening weekend, 13-7, falling to Penn (14-6, 2-1 IVY) on a windy and cold day at Robertson Field at Satow Stadium.
 
Columbia entered the game looking for a series win, after coming back in dramatic fashion to win the second game of Saturday's doubleheader on back-to-back home runs, the walk-off smash coming off the bat of Austin Mowrey.  But Penn jumped on the Lions early and often to take a commanding lead from the start, scoring nine runs over the first three innings before Columbia got on the board in the bottom of the third.

"We lost to a better team today," said head coach Brett Boretti.  "Penn took full advantage of what we gave them and executed better than we did in all facets of the game today.  We will get back to it on Tuesday."
 
Penn then went on to score three more, extending their lead to 12-2 after five innings.  But the Lions did give themselves a chance to battle through their five errors and a down day for starter Billy Black (0-4), thanks to Derek Yoo and JD Ogden coming out of the pen to toss six innings of work, three each respectively, giving up only three runs over the final six innings.
 
In the seventh, Columbia's bats finally came alive as they got to Penn's eventual winning pitcher, Owen Coady, for five runs.  It started with a Hayden Schott leadoff double, he then advanced to second on a wild pitch to put himself in scoring position.
 
A walk from Weston Eberly and Joshua Solomon loaded the bases full of Lions and set the table for a big offensive inning.  Swinging again at the first pitch, Mowrey smacked an RBI single past first base to score Schott and advance the runners.  Up stepped EJ Kreutzmann, and with one out he smashed a double to center field that almost went out, scoring Eberly and Solomon giving the Lions left fielder a pair of RBIs.
 
Andy Blake scored Mowrey on a groundout and Tyler MacGregor brought home Kreutzmann to put the score at 12-7.  But over the final two innings, the Lions could not get runs across the plate and the five-run outburst in the seventh was a bit too little too late as Penn tagged on one more run in the top of the eighth to wrap up the game and put the final score at 13-7.
 
GAME NOTES: Anton Lazits had a great weekend, going 5-12 1 2B 3 RBI … Kreutzmann took advantage of his three at bats over the weekend, going 2-3 1 HR 1 2B 5 RBI … Both Schott and Cole Hage had solid weekends, with Schott going 4-9 1 HR 2 RBI and Hage matching him at 4-9 1 2B 1 RBI … MacGregor added some power over the weekend, going 4-11 with a pair of doubles … Schott increases his current hitting streak to seven games.
 
UP NEXT: Columbia next heads to Queens, New York to face St. John's in a midweek matchup on Wednesday, Mar. 30 with first pitch set for 3:30 p.m.  The Lions then return home on the weekend of Apr. 2-3 where they will host another Ivy League foe when Princeton comes to town for a Saturday, Apr. 2 doubleheader set to get started at 11:30 a.m. and a Sunday, Apr. 3 12 p.m. matchup to finish the weekend at Robertson Field at Satow Stadium.
 
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