Women's volleyball hosts last two home matches

With revenge on their minds, the members of the women's volleyball team will play two grudge matches against teams who have already defeated them this season. The Tigers (14-8 overall, 5-6 Ivy League) host Cornell (19-3, 12-0) and Columbia (6-17, 4-8) this weekend for their last home matches of the season.

Princeton is ranked fourth in the league behind Cornell, Yale and Brown, but even though the Tigers won't be competing for the league title and a tournament slot, they still have hopes of a winning Ivy season.

Princeton takes on the league's sixth-ranked team, Columbia, tonight at 7 p.m. in Dillon Gym. The Lions swept the Tigers in their match on Oct. 15, defeating Princeton by scores of 30-24, 20-28 and 30-25.

Columbia ranks at the bottom of the Ivy League in nearly every statistical category, but the Lions' numbers do not accurately represent the effort they put into their games.

"Columbia is a very scrappy team — they are really good at winning long rallies, and they are good at keeping the ball in the court when they are in trouble," junior libero Jenny McReynolds said.

The Tigers' more challenging match will likely be the one against Cornell on Saturday at 4 p.m.

The Big Red leads the league with 12 Ivy wins and will "obviously win the league," according to head coach Glenn Nelson.

"We are really looking forward to this weekend," McReynolds said. "It's our last two matches at home, and these are two teams that we have lost to earlier this season, so we really want to win. Cornell is undefeated [in league play], so it would be really exciting to be the team to spoil their perfect season."

Cornell sits just behind Yale in hitting percentage, assists and kills and leads the league in blocks. The Big Red does, however, fall below Princeton in serving aces.

"We have been doing a lot of blocking and hitting drills because both of these teams are very physical — meaning they are tall and put up a very aggressive block against our offense," McReynolds said.

As if the Tigers needed more incentive to play hard this weekend, the matches will also be very emotionally significant for the team.

"At this point, it doesn't really matter if we win or lose, but rather how we play the match," McReynolds said. "It would feel really good to know that we came back and beat teams that we lost to."

The matchup against Cornell will be the last time the three Tiger seniors take the court in Dillon Gym. A win would send them off in style.

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"The last three years we played for a share of the championship or second place at the end of the season," Nelson said. "This year we want to send the seniors off on a positive note and get our freshmen a little better."

In order to provide a fitting final home game for the seniors, Princeton will need to play with more power and fewer mistakes than it did in its previous contests against the Big Red and the Lions. If multiple players contribute consistently strong play, the Tigers should come out on top in these final matches of 2005.