Volleyball defeated Penn in four sets Friday before falling short the next day against Princeton.
The Red (10-6, 4-3 Ivy) battled hard to deliver a win against the Quakers (9-7, 3-4 Ivy), who put up a good fight until the match’s end. Junior outside hitter Eliza Konvicka delivered yet another outstanding performance, racking up 23 kills over four sets. Junior setter Doga Ozalp also had a career night, as she posted a career-high 58 assists while contributing positively on defense.
In the first set, Cornell established an early lead before allowing Penn to go on a couple of runs. Towards the end of the set, though, Cornell scored four straight points to close it out.
The second set featured six different lead changes, making it the most tightly contested of the match. With the game tied 23-23, the Quakers took two straight points to seal the win. Head coach Trudy Vande Berg said it was uncharacteristic of the team to let the set go in that way.
“In the second set, we made a lot of errors,” Vande Berg said. “We had five service errors and six hitting errors unforced, so we basically gave them half the set. We talked about that in between the second and the third set. We made that adjustment, so we did a lot better in the third and fourth.”
When the third set became tied 25-25, this time it was Konvicka who notched two straight points to deliver the win. Similarly, when Penn jumped out to a lead in the fourth set, the Red went on a 4-0 run to close out both the set and the match.
In the first set of its next game, the Red picked up right where they left off, beating the Tigers (7-9, 5-2 Ivy) convincingly.
“We came out kind of calm and confident attacking,” Vande Berg said. “We served really well. We got them out of system. We executed the scouting report really well, and we kind of controlled that entire first set, and so we know what we're capable of.”
In the second set, though, things began to go downhill for the Red. Cornell lost its footing early on in the first set, allowing the Tigers to go on a five-point run that the Red never recovered from. While the third started tighter, Princeton again began to pull away due to its dominant attack.
“We weren’t aggressive basically in our whole game,” Vande Berg said. “We weren't just going after it and against teams like that, you have to, and when you have a team who has players that can just hit the snot out of the ball, you have to move on. We let it get into our heads a little bit, so we started to get tentative.”
In the third and fourth sets, it was more of the same. Despite moments of resilience from Cornell, Princeton continued to dominate with its strong offense and ultimately secured the win.
Next weekend, the Red will again go on the road to play Columbia (3-13, 0-7 Ivy) at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The game can be streamed live on ESPN+.
Dylan Graff is a Sun Contributor and can be reached at dg765@cornell.edu.
