Princeton University Athletics
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Volleyball Enters The Familiarity Of EIVA Play With An Unfamiliar Opponent
February 03, 2016 | Men's Volleyball
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While the Princeton men's volleyball team would have preferred a better record to this point of the season, the Tigers know that the most critical 14 matches of the season are the EIVA ones, and they open league play this weekend with an unfamiliar opponent.
Princeton heads to Charleston, W.V., this weekend to take on the Golden Eagles, who became the eighth team in the EIVA during the summer. Charleston made its EIVA debut last month in a 3-0 loss to George Mason, and now it will host its first full league weekend of the season.
Unlike most other EIVA teams, the Golden Eagles will not play the standard home-and-away schedule. Teams of greater distance from Charleston (Princeton, NJIT, Harvard and Sacred Heart) will play both games in the same location, and will alternate that location every year. Thus, Charleston's first trip to Dillon Gym won't come until the 2017 season.
Princeton doesn't particularly care when it picks up a victory, it just wants to get its first one (and then second one, ideally) this weekend. The Tigers, who lost four starters from last year's EIVA semifinal squad, are 0-6 on the season, though four of those matches have come against Top-6 teams in either the USA or Canada.
The standout performer for Princeton this season has been senior captain Devin Stearns, who currently ranks eighth in the NCAA with 4.29 kills per set. More than half of his kills this season came during a historic showing at UC-San Diego, when he posted 33 of them in a 3-2 (15-13 in the fifth) loss to the Tritons. Stearns, who had eight kills in a memorable fifth set, has started for three EIVA postseason Princeton teams, and he knows the path to a fourth postseason trip must start this weekend.