Huge game for Volleyball; Fitzpatrick's actual broken rim

My first and only actual beat so far at the DP was Volleyball (I've been an editor since covering them last Fall). I got to write a few fun stories earlier this year, but some new writers have been covering them recently. I still follow the team closely, and they have been having a tremendous season, with one of the two biggest games of the season on tap for tomorrow. So, I decided I needed to write something on The Buzz about our most under-the-radar fall season team.

Also, I found one more interesting item on the Fitzpatrick backboard incident. So continue after the jump to get the scoop.

Volleyball

One of those new writers wrote a nice preview of the team's weekend road matches with Brown and Yale. Last night, the Quakers swept the Bears, as freshman phenom Lauren Martin smacked an impressive 15 kills in just three sets at a scorching .517 hitting clip. She is a very legitimate Ivy ROY candidate in my opinion. Right now she is fifth in the Ivy League with a .305 hitting percentage (and the only freshman in the top 10), but Columbia rookie Megan Gaughn leads the league in kills right now. She presents the greatest threat to Martin, who is the next most prolific freshman attacker with 3.32 kills per set compared to Gaughn's 4.09.

Penn has the second-best overall record (11-4) in the Ivy League this year behind Yale (12-1), and Gaughn's Lions (10-5) are the only other team that's close. The winner of tomorrow's Quakers-Bulldogs contest will have the inside track at the 2009 Ivy title. Of course, it's only the third game of a 14-game Ivy season, so anything can happen after tomorrow's showdown. But these two clubs are clearly tops in the League right now.

As a team, Yale leads the Ancient Eight in hitting percentage (.256; 2nd-highest: Penn, .197), opponent hitting percentage (.106, 2nd: Columbia, .172), blocks (2.32, 2nd: Lions, 2.04, Penn's third) and digs (18.89, 2nd: Columbia, 18.49). Yale holds a significant edge over the rest of the League in some of those categories, but Penn leads the conference in some other areas: kills (13.77, 2nd: Yale, 13.35) and assists (12.74, 2nd: Yale, 12.08). The only team category in which Penn or Yale doesn't lead is aces (Brown does, but Yale's second). The Quakers and Bulldogs also have two of the best liberos in the country, and the clear cream of the conference. Yale junior Kelly Ozurovich ranks fourth in Division I with 5.85 digs per set, while Penn junior Madison "Mojo" Wojciechowski ranks 11th with 5.51.

The Quakers were the only team in the conference to beat the Bulldogs last year on their run to a 13-1 record and Ivy Championship. In fact, Yale only lost seven sets on that remarkable run, and five of them came at the hands of Penn, which went the distance with the Elis in both matchups but lost at the Palestra. The Quakers' win was an extremely impressive five-set thriller in New Haven, Conn., and it came on the first weekend after coach Kerry Carr announced that she'd be taking a leave of absence to battle breast cancer. The Quakers lost to Brown in five sets in their first game without Carr, then assistant coach Ryan Goodwin led them to the incredible victory over Yale.

Carr is back at full strength and as good as ever this season, and the team's performance definitely shows it. With much help from Goodwin, Carr also brought in a tremendous recruiting class that features Martin and a few other very promising youngsters like Lauren Davis (fourth on team in kills) and Amanda Pacheco (t-second in blocks). Last year's Yale team -- which also won its first-round game in the NCAA tournament before being swept by powerhouse Penn State -- only graduated one major contributor, setter Ally Mendenhall, but freshman Kerry Clavadetscher is second in the Ivies with 9.67 assists/set (Penn's Megan Tryon is first with 10.98).

The Bulldogs are definitely favored in this contest. They've been even better this year, having lost just one set in 12 wins so far (though they were swept by Virginia Tech). They were 11-3 entering the upset by Penn last year. The Quakers are also much improved, and the bottom line is that these teams are the serious contenders for the championship this season. (Typical challenger Princeton has struggled to a 2-10, 0-2 Ivy record under a new coach this season.) It is very possible that the winner of this game enters the Oct. 30 game at the Palestra with a perfect Ivy record, and the other enters with just one loss.

The drama unfortunately cannot come down to a late-season Penn-Yale showdown, because each team has six games left after finishing the two-game series. Nevertheless, both games are certainly circled on Carr's calendar.

Fitzpatrick

Following up on my previous post when I wrote about and photographed Brian Fitzpatrick's broken backboard escapade, I just stumbled upon Andreas Schreiber's blog yesterday and he has a photograph of the actual broken backboard:

I guess the entire thing didn't shatter all at once, which I thought was the case. Schreiber also mentions Fitzpatrick's nickname (someone had asked about naming the dunk, but this is pretty close). Apparently the team calls Fitzpatrick "The Big Deuce." Not sure where that comes from, but it's pretty funny.