Vball tunes up before Tourney

Splits vs. Drexel and G'town It wasn't too important and the Quakers hope it will stay that way. Although the Penn volleyball team's final matches of the regular season against Drexel and Georgetown did not have overwhelming significance, they did serve as the final tune-up for the Ivy League Championships this weekend at Columbia. Penn (14-8) started Saturday's double-header in fine fashion with a 16-14, 15-3, 15-10 triumph over its West Philly rival, the Drexel Dragons (11-17) at the Palestra. The win was a big one for the Quakers, who were using the weekend matches as an opportunity to fine-tune their games and to adjust to the loss of junior outside hitter Karen Jones, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against Columbia last week. After having destroyed the Dragons in a preseason scrimmage, the Quakers expected to beat Drexel. Yet Penn was wary of overconfidence and didn't let complacency affect it. "The second game against Drexel was one of the best I've ever seen this team play," Penn coach Margaret Feeney said. That is certainly a reasonable description considering not only the 15-3 score, but also the Quakers' .667 team hitting percentage. Senior captain Devon Austin led the team with 15 kills while sophomore setter Heather Glick recorded 32 assists in the three games. Penn also did the job defensively. "I think our shortcoming fell in the area of terminating play and being able to finish rallies," Drexel coach Scott Pennewill said. "Penn did a good job blocking at the net and we did not adjust well. Our hitters were not intelligent. They did not make the necessary adjustments on what was available." "The great thing about the Drexel match was that we never let up as a team," Austin said. And the awful thing about the Georgetown match was that the Quakers did let up – on several occasions, and ended up losing 11-15, 15-5, 15-7, 5-15, 9-15 to the Hoyas (12-17). After jumping out to a 10-7 game one lead, Penn collapsed, losing eight of the next nine points. However, the team rebounded in fine fashion, winning games two and three easily. Had the Quakers converted their game-one lead into a win, the match would have been over in a cakewalk. Somehow, such mental lapses always come back to haunt a team. On Saturday, Penn was not exempt from this axiom of sports, as Georgetown improved its play to take advantage of the Quaker letdown and coasted to wins in the final two frames. "We could have won and we should have won," Austin said. "Georgetown is overrated, but we did not prove that out there." The main reason Penn fell short was an array of serving and hitting errors. The team's hitting percentage was only .188 in game four before dropping to a horrific .133 in the final game. The Quakers made 16 serving errors throughout the match versus only nine aces. On the bright side for Penn, sophomore Nida Germanas did notch six blocks and Glick dished out 50 assists over the five games. Junior Hallie Ben-Horin, who has made enormous contributions off the bench all season, had another good performance with a team-leading three aces and seven digs. Freshman outside hitter Alexis Usnick did a good job filling in for Jones as well. "The Georgetown match was honestly a big disappointment," Feeney said. "We should have won it in three, and then we weren't nearly aggressive enough in the fifth game where every point counts. We also made three serving errors there, which is inexcusable with rally score (in the fifth game when you do not have to side out to score a point)." However, all is not lost for the Quakers, who are looking to use their inconsistent play against the Hoyas as a learning experience – an experience that they will hopefully learn not to repeat at the Ivy Tournament this weekend against teams like Yale and Cornell, two teams very similar to Georgetown. "Certainly, getting two wins would have been great from a momentum and confidence standpoint," Austin said. "This team plays its best when nobody has any doubts out there. We're a very emotional team, and as a result, we're very up and down."