Don’t let the opponent fool you. Even though the Tigers aren’t in town, the Ivy title is on the line at O’Donnell Field this weekend.

Beginning with a noon doubleheader tomorrow, the Harvard baseball team will host Cornell in the best-of-three Ivy Championship Series.

The winner earns the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, which begins at the end of the month. Game 3 will be played at 1 p.m. on Sunday if necessary.

“I can’t wait,” junior Josh Klimkiewicz said after Harvard clinched the Red Rolfe title Monday. ‘I was disappointed last year that we didn’t go to [the Series], but hopefully this year we’ll win and get to go to a regional.”

The opportunity is a familiar one for the Crimson (24-15, 15-5 Ivy)—which is playing in its third ICS in four seasons—but its opponent is more surprising.

The Big Red (17-22, 11-9) upset nine-time defending Lou Gehrig Division champion Princeton to advance to its first ICS in program history, and it did it with pitching and defense.

The Cornell staff, tops in the Gehrig Division with a 4.97 ERA, more or less shut down Harvard in an April 9 doubleheader at O’Donnell, but left Cambridge with a pair of losses in pitcher’s duels.

“The team that played us the toughest all year was Cornell,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said. “They have really good pitching.”

Dan Gala, Brad Terwepner and Blake Hamilton—each of whom the Crimson will likely see again—combined to hold Harvard to only four earned runs in 3-1 and 2-1 Harvard victories.

“We’re swinging a little better than we were at that point in the season, but I think they’re swinging a little better than they were, too,” Walsh said. “So we’re looking forward to it.”

Walsh may be understating his offense’s improvement.

Bolstered by the healthy return of Zak Farkes, the Crimson’s lineup has found its groove, scoring more than nine runs per game over its last two Ivy series.

Over Harvard’s past 10 games, Farkes is batting an absurd .541 with four home runs. His 20 hits in that span matched his output from the season’s first 29 games.

But Farkes hasn’t been the only one putting on a show. In its last eight Ivy games, the Crimson lineup averaged two home runs a game, with six different players reaching the bleachers.

The offensive outburst helped compensate for the loss of junior shortstop Morgan Brown.