It’s mid-April, and the Ivy League has a new frontrunner—one that’s been here before, knows how to win, and, at the moment, can’t seem to lose.
The Penn Quakers ran their winning streak to seven on Sunday at Booth Field, sweeping a doubleheader from Cornell by scores of 4-3 and 9-4. They now sit alone atop the Ivy standings at 9-2, having tied their longest win streak of the season—and, for that matter, their longest since last spring, when they stormed through the inaugural Ivy League Tournament and landed themselves in the NCAA Regional Final. They’re 15-12 overall, riding a wave, and eyeing a third series sweep with the finale set for Monday at noon.
This has quietly become a habit for Penn. For the fifth straight full season—excluding the pandemic pause—they’ve posted at least three Ivy series wins. They claimed the regular-season title in both 2022 and 2023, and hoisted the Ivy Tournament trophy last spring. So, no, this is not some out-of-nowhere streak. This is a program built to win, playing like it expects to. Sunday’s sweep also marked the Quakers’ best start to Ivy play in a decade, since the 2015 club opened with a 15-2 run that’s still remembered around University City as a high-water mark.
Across town at Smithson Field, Saint Joseph’s didn’t just survive a Sunday doubleheader against Fordham—they turned it into a marathon thriller. In the opener, Colton Book was sensational. He gave the Hawks eight innings, allowed just four hits and two runs, struck out 10, walked no one, and picked up his Atlantic 10-leading sixth win of the season. That’s not just efficiency—that’s dominance.
But the encore stole the show. Down six runs entering the bottom of the seventh, the Hawks flipped the script, scoring seven times over the final two innings to complete a stunning 11-10 comeback. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t perfect. But it was gritty and loud and just enough to send Fordham packing. With the sweep, Saint Joseph’s moves into a logjam at the top of the A-10 standings—five teams, one shared spot at first—and now preps for a pivotal series starting Thursday against Davidson, another contender caught in the midseason cluster.
And then there’s Villanova. The Wildcats took the whole “Sunday statement” thing and turned it into a mic drop in Indianapolis, pounding Butler 21-2 to clinch the series and notch their biggest margin of victory since 2009. That’s not a typo—21 runs, 12 of them in a single inning, an offensive explosion more suited to the turf at Citizens Bank Park than Bulldog Park.
Freshman Brayden Leonard went a perfect 5-for-5 at the plate with two runs and two RBI, becoming the first Wildcat with five hits in a game since Ryan Toohers did it back in 2018. Jason Neff launched his second grand slam of the year as part of that monstrous fourth inning. At the top of the order, Austin Lemon and Michael Whooley turned in matching lines—three hits, three runs, three RBI each—while Alec Sachais stepped in after starter Bobby Finn left early and promptly threw 4.2 scoreless innings, punching out seven for a new career high.
Villanova, now 19-14 and sitting second in the Big East at 4-2, has quietly stitched together six straight Sunday series-deciding wins. There’s something to be said for closing out weekends with authority—and right now, there might not be a team in the conference doing it better.
So, Penn’s rising, Saint Joe’s is surging, and Villanova just dropped 21 on the road. April college baseball in Philadelphia? Yeah, it’s got a pulse. And it’s beating hard.
