After an unsuccessful trip south to take on Penn and Princeton, the Red will try its luck up north against Dartmouth and Harvard, taking on the Green tonight before facing the Crimson tomorrow afternoon. If able to sweep the weekend’s matches, the Red is in position to move into third place after this weekend.

Cornell (6-13, 3-5 Ivy) opens play with a match against Dartmouth (7-11, 3-5). The two squads currently share the fifth place spot in the league behind Cornell’s other opponent — fourth-place Harvard (8-13, 4-4).

The Green began its conference schedule as the stronger of the two traveling partners with two 3-0 wins over Harvard. Since then, playing the same two opponents each weekend, the Crimson has moved ahead of Dartmouth thanks in large part to a five-match losing streak by Dartmouth.

Dartmouth’s only conference win aside from its season sweep of Harvard came against Columbia the night before losing to Cornell. In the first matchup of the year for Cornell and Dartmouth, the Red handled the first two games easily, winning 25-17 and 25-22. Dartmouth mounted a bit of a comeback by winning the third game 25-22 before falling in game four, 26-24.

Sophomore setter Jordan Reeder led Cornell’s offense with a career-high 39 assists and 24 digs to go with a bonus five kills on just nine attempts. Just to solidify her previous-week’s Ivy League Player of the Week win, she added a game-high two service aces.

Freshman outside Deveney Pula led the Red against Dartmouth with 15 kills and junior outside Alessa Cekauskas followed with 11. Senior captain libero Megan Mushovic did what she does — collect a match-high 30 digs.

The Green focused their offense on sophomore outside Madeline Baird, who took 66 of Dartmouth’s 178 attack attempts. As a team Dartmouth hit just .157, down from their season average of .178. Cornell hit .168, higher than their league-worst .135 season average.

The Green’s loss to Cornell was the first of their five consecutive losses, of which their most recent loss was a 3-0 loss to Brown. In their one match against the Bears, Cornell won 3-1.

Harvard has seen more success this season, but like Dartmouth will enter the weekend having lost its most recent match — a 3-0 defeat at the hands of undefeated Yale. Harvard won its first match of the season against Cornell, 3-1, the first time in 10 matches the Crimson was able to outscore the Red.

Cornell appeared to be on the way to its way to its 10th straight win against Harvard with a 25-21 win in the first game, but the Crimson had other ideas — winning the next three straight games, 25-20, 25-28, 25-17.

Harvard out-powered Cornell at the net, hitting .256 with 49 kills and nine team blocks. The Red managed to put together 46 kills, but totaled 28 errors — to Harvard’s 16 — to compile a .135 hitting percentage. The Red also had just two team blocks.

Against Cornell, Harvard had three players with double-digit kills — sophomore middle/outside Anne Ingersoll (12), sophomore middle Sandra Fryhofer (11), and junior outside Mikaelle Comrie (10). Senior setter Lily Durwood had 35 assists and got 26 digs from sophomore libero Christine Wu.

Cornell had 29 assists from Reeder in its first match against the Crimson. Most of those assists went to Pula (10 kills, .148) and senior captain middle Juliana Rogers (10, .115). Cekauskas added nine kills with a .286 hitting percentage opposite Pula. In its last match against Harvard, the Red’s hitting percentage dropped from .219 in Game 1 to .188, then .147, and finally .000 in Game 4. This weekend, with a chance to jump over both Dartmouth and Harvard for third place, there’s nowhere to go but up.