NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- For the fourth time over the past six seasons, Columbia will represent the Ivy League in the NCAA Tournament. The Lions earned the right with a two-game sweep of Yale in the 2018 Ivy League Baseball Championship Series at historic Yale Field in New Haven, Conn. 
 
Following a 4-0 Game 1 victory on Tuesday, May 22, Columbia needed 15 innings to dispatch with the Yale Bulldogs via a 2-1 margin in Game 2. 
 
Teddy Hague and Simon Whiteman opened the contest with back-to-back singles, before Benny Wanger plated the first—and only—Yale run of the ILCS with a sacrifice fly to center field in the top half of the first inning. Columbia answered in the bottom of the second, when Lane Robinette picked an opportune moment to send the fourth home run of his collegiate career over the wall in left center field. 
 
What followed were 12 scoreless innings that featured a combined total of 15 runners left on-base. Perhaps the greatest opportunity over the stretch that spanned from the third to the 14th inning, came when Columbia had the bases loaded with one out in the bottom of the 12th. 
 
Randell Kanemaru hit a well-struck ball to shallow center field that found the glove of Hague for the second out of the inning. Wanger, who threw five innings in relief, then got his final out with a full-count, called third strike against Liam McGill to end the Lion bases-loaded threat. 
 
With Alex Stiegler on the mound for the Bulldogs, Ben Porter led off the bottom of the 15th with a double to left center—just the third extra-base knock of the contest. The Lions would eventually find themselves with the bases loaded and one out following a pair of intentional walks and a sacrifice bunt. 
 
With the stage set, Joe Engel stepped to the plate and sent the first pitch he saw to center field—deep enough to plate Porter for a walk-off sacrifice fly. 
 
The Lions, who join Yale as Ivy League baseball co-champions, will head to their sixth NCAA Tournament all-time and their fifth since 2008. This is the 11th Ivy League title for Columbia and the fifth ILCS victory for the Lions. Columbia will learn its NCAA fate during the NCAA Division I Baseball Selection Show at 12 noon on May 28—live on ESPNU. 
 
Columbia is the first road team to prove victorious in the ILCS since Dartmouth in 2010 and the first to do so via a series sweep since Princeton in 2006.