Women's Volleyball: Win over Dartmouth earns weekend split

Despite its youth and relative inexperience, the women’s volleyball team had no trouble rebounding from a heartbreaking loss on Friday, pulling through to finish the weekend with a commanding victory 24 hours later.

After suffering a defeat to Harvard, the Tigers (4-12 overall, 2-3 Ivy League) made a ferocious comeback in their Saturday matchup against Dartmouth (7-9, 3-3) to end Princeton’s road trip with a 3-1 (25-18, 24-26, 25-13, 25-13) victory in Hanover, N.H.

The day before, the Tigers were neck and neck with the Crimson (7-10, 3-3) in a five-set thriller that ended in a dramatic one-point game decision loss. There was only one aspect of the game in which Harvard had a clear advantage: blocks. The Crimson led Princeton in blocking 13-2, though Princeton had a slim advantage in kills, 65-55, and digs, 99-98. The 3-2 (25-23, 19-25, 16-25, 25-16, 16-14) loss was Princeton’s first to Harvard since Oct. 26, 2002.

“I think that we played a really great match,” senior outside hitter and co-captain Sheena Donohue said. “Everyone was putting a lot of effort into play, and it was pretty evident in the way we were playing that everything was clicking, but it was just one of those matches where officiating can really have an influence. In the last game, especially, there were some calls that changed the momentum of the game. I think we definitely deserved to win, but we will get them next time when we’re at home, no question.”

Despite the disappointing ending to the match, the Tigers showed that their young squad has incredible strength and depth on the court. Leading Princeton’s offensive effort was Donohue, who earned a team-high 18 kills, and fellow outside hitter freshman Lydia Rudnick, who had 17 kills. Anchoring the defense was sophomore libero Hillary Ford, who had 32 digs.

The Tigers got on the board first to start off the first set and earned a 5-1 lead in the first minutes of the game. Princeton maintained an ever-diminishing lead up until the middle of the set, when Harvard tied up the game with a service ace. The two teams traded points after that, tying the game a total of seven times. Ultimately, the Crimson took the set by two points off a Tiger attack error and a Harvard kill.

“Harvard was playing a really good defensive game,” Donohue said. “They have a really good libero who was just playing really well against us. It was frustrating because we couldn’t get many kills. It was kind of difficult because we had to change our strategy in the middle of the game knowing that the libero was just picking up everything.”

Following the first-set loss, Princeton came back with a vengeance in the second set. Though Harvard went on a three-point run to start the match 3-0, the Tigers rallied for five consecutive points, giving them a 9-5 lead they would never let go of.

From there, the Orange and Black took off, completely dominating the attack and holding back the Crimson’s outside hitters to win the set with a decisive six-point margin of victory. The third set was slightly closer in the beginning, but the Tigers managed to pull away to get a nine-point lead for the win.

With the momentum rolling in its favor, Princeton looked ready to take the fourth set and the win. Unfortunately, the Tigers — as has been their trademark lately — failed to close out the match. An impressive Harvard defense shut down Princeton, taking the set and pushing the game to five sets. Exhausted and frustrated, the Tigers nonetheless played well in the final set and seemed on the verge of victory. In the end, however, two Princeton attack errors gave Harvard the win.

The following day, the Tigers headed to Hanover, N.H., hungry for a win to redeem themselves from their close loss to Harvard.

“To some degree it was hard [to come back after the loss],” Donohue said. “But then we were out for blood [against Dartmouth]. We just wanted to show that we could actually win games and not just take people to five.”

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Princeton was voracious in the matchup, with four players in double digits for kills, including Donohue, who earned a double-double with 12 kills and 22 digs. The Tigers came out of the gate running, going on a six-point run to take a decisive 14-8 lead to start the first set.

The Big Green refused to go down without a fight, however, and came back with a five-point run to cut the deficit to 15-14. Fortunately for fans of the Orange and Black, that was as close as Dartmouth would get to Princeton. The Tigers got hot offensively and closed out the set with a seven-point lead.

Even with the momentum swinging in its favor, Princeton once again seemed incapable of closing out a game in which it held the lead. Initially in the second set, neither side was able to gain an advantage. Though the Tigers eventually mounted a 14-9 advantage, the Big Green used some impressive serving to rebound and erase the five-point lead. Princeton benefitted from several Big Green errors and actually managed to take back a lead, but the tight game went to Dartmouth after an attack error by Donohue.

“After we lost the second set, we were all just thinking that the last thing we want to do is go to five after the Harvard game,” Donohue said.

Watching the matchup slip out of control, the Tigers came back in the third with a scoring spree. Princeton went on a six-point run followed by a seven-point run that culminated in a commanding 12-point margin of victory. The Tigers may have been unable to finish against Harvard, but in Hanover there was no such problem. Princeton dominated in the fourth set, taking the Big Green down by 12 points once again.

The Tigers held Dartmouth to a .096 hitting percentage while maintaining their own attack at .273. Leading the attack on Saturday was sophomore middle blocker Cathryn Quinn with 16 kills, with Rudnick following close behind with 15.