The women’s volleyball team headed further upstate to face a weak team in Buffalo. The Bills entered last night’s match with a pathetic 4-20 record and really did not fool anyone.
The Red (15-8, 4-3 Ivy) came, saw, and conquered in three straight games with scores of 15-9, 15-8, and 15-11.
The match saw impressive numbers put up by many members of the Cornell squad.
Senior middle blocker Robin Moore lead the team with a .400 hitting percentage and 16 kills. Junior outside hitter Jennifer Borncamp continues to gain recognition for her stellar performances and had a double-double with 13 kills and 10 digs. Freshman outside hitter Debbie Quibell also had a double-double with 12 kills and 13 digs. Offensive terror Rachel Rice also added 41 assists to her name.
This match will ultimately mean more to the Red than just a notch in the win column. The key factor in the contest was the general decrease in errors. In all three games, Cornell had fewer errors than Buffalo. Overall, Cornell had 21 errors and Buffalo made 28. Of the Red’s 21 errors, 10 of them came in the third game, a trend that has been consistent in the Red’s recent matches.
Despite sweeping Dartmouth two weekends ago, the Red committed more than half of its errors in the third game.
The problem the Red seems to have is against teams that are perceived as threats. The beginning of the team’s error streak was in its match against Syracuse. This match was the Red’s first midweek feature, and came after the Harvard/Dartmouth slaughtering. The team was tired, sloppy, and Syracuse was a good team. However, the reason the Red lost that game in three straight games boils down to one fact: errors.
These notorious errors seem to come up at the most inconvenient times. Last weekend in its games against Ivy rivals Pennsylvania and Princeton, the Red was again swept in three by both teams because of errors. In these matches, the errors were not limited to the third game. They were everywhere. Head coach Christie Jackson was confident that if the team had not committed so many mistakes, it could have won.
But if the Red can translate the momentum it picked up in last night’s dismantling of Buffalo into the Ivy tournament, then it can legitimately give Penn and Princeton a run for their money.
Archived article by Katherine Granish