M. volleyball to face Penn State, host Ivy tourney

Men's volleyball has a lot on the line this weekend.

Sunday Princeton (8-11 overall, 4-9 Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) looks to defend its Ivy League crown.

Saturday, the Tigers take on No. 14 Penn State in their final regular season match, a match which they must win to have a shot at the conference postseason.

The Lions are the best team in the EIVA right now. On April 9, they clinched the EIVA Tait Division Championship with a 3-1 win over Concordia, a title they have claimed eight of the last nine years. The victory pushed their conference record to a perfect 12-0.

The two teams last met on Feb. 11, when Penn State used a balanced offensive attack to defeat Princeton 3-0 (16-14, 15-13, 15-5). The Lions rallied from a 10-4 deficit in the first game led by Jason Hawkins, who posted nine of his 15 kills in the opening frame.

In the second game, it was the Tigers who rallied from a 10-4 deficit, tying the score at 12-12. But two Princeton errors gave Penn State a 15-13 triumph.

The Lions are led by setter Jose Quinines, a junior from Bayamon, Puerto Rico. He leads the team with 1,657 assists, averaging 16.74 per game.

He will square off against Princeton senior setter Jason Morrow, who is averaging 16.1 assists per game. Last year, Morrow was named the Ivy League tournament MVP.

Title defense

Princeton will host the Ivy League tournament Sunday at Dillon Gym. Last year the Tigers claimed the crown decisively, defeating all of their opponents — Yale, Penn, Cornell and Harvard — in straight games.

Men's volleyball in the Ivy League spans a strange spectrum of casual club teams to varsity programs such as Princeton. Yale, Cornell and Penn are all club teams.

Harvard, in fact, is the only other varsity squad in the tournament. This season the Crimson enter the tournament with a 8-2 conference record. Harvard captured the EIVA Odeneal division crown with victories against Columbia Union and Eastern Mennonite.