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Women's volleyball faces crucial weekend in Ivy League title race

The women’s volleyball team has a big weekend ahead, with four home matches over the next week that will either make or break their chase for the Ivy League title. The Tigers (9-8 overall, 4-4 Ivy League) will face off against Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend before taking on Yale and Brown the next. These four teams stand between the Tigers and the Ivy League title.

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Just last weekend the Tigers dominated at Penn, winning 3-1. Senior right side hitter Kendall Peterkin had 22 kills for .354 in the match, with 10 digs and four blocks, and was named Ivy League Player of the Week as a result. Peterkin has also garnered first-team All-Ivy honors twice, and the match against Penn marked her 14th 20 kill match of her career. Freshman setter Claire Nussbaum also played notably well and set some personal records, serving on a 12-0 run, while notching 48 assists and 21 digs to receive recognition of her own as Ivy League Rookie of the Week. But the Tiger roster extends deeper than that, with junior outside hitter Cara Mattaliano and junior middle blocker Brittany Ptak, who casino online is ranked second in the Ivy League for hitting percentage, taking a larger role on the court and helping the Tigers to their recent successes.

The matches against Dartmouth (9-8, 6-2) and Harvard (10-8, 6-2) may prove particularly challenging for the Tigers, who fell to both teams early on in the season, when the Tigers were 0-3 in the Ivy League and had yet to pick up the momentum they’ve carried through their last five games, of which they have won four. Harvard, which shared last year’s Ivy League title with Yale, delivered a decisive 3-0 win in Cambridge, while the Dartmouth Big Green felled the Tigers at 3-1, with the Tigers winning the first set before Dartmouth narrowly won the second, and went on to win the final two. Both teams have strong players that may prove challenging for the Tigers to defeat; Harvard’s Corinne Bain is one of the top players in the league, and is one of the main contenders for Ivy League Player of the Year, while Dartmouth’s Emily Astarita leads the Ivy League in kills, with 3.98 kills per set.

The Tigers will take on Dartmouth on tomorrow at 7 p.m. and Harvard on Saturday at 5 p.m., in Dillon Gymnasium.

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