Princeton Set To Honor Class Of 2019 While Also Chasing Fourth Straight Title

Friday, November 9

Princeton, N.J.

7:00 PM

Princeton University

Harvard

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

Princeton Set To Honor Class Of 2019 While Also Chasing Fourth Straight Title

November 08, 2018 | Women's Volleyball

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The Princeton Class of 2019 will play its final two regular season games at Dillon Gym this weekend, though if all goes well, the four Princeton seniors could get one more match on campus.

Nnenna Ibe, Claire Nussbaum, Caroline Sklaver and Brittany Smith have helped Princeton win Ivy League championships in each of their first three seasons on campus, and they enter their final weekend in the league race once again. Princeton will host both Harvard (Friday, 7 pm) and Dartmouth (Saturday, 5 pm) in a pair of matches that will be streamed live on ESPN+. At the same time, Yale — which leads Princeton by one match in the Ivy standings — will host both Cornell (Friday, 7) and Columbia (Saturday, 5).

Should Princeton go 2-0 and Yale split the weekend, both teams would share the Ivy League regular season title for a second straight year, and they would meet the following weekend for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Princeton enters the weekend with the Ivy League leader in assists, Jessie Harris (11.74), as well as the league's top two in hitting percentage (Clare Lenihan, .384; Maggie O'Connell, .370); O'Connell, the reigning Ivy Player of the Year, also ranks in the top two in the league in kills this season (3.43 per set).

Princeton split this road trip earlier in the season; Devon Peterkin led the Tigers with 12 kills in a 3-0 win in Hanover, but the Crimson held Princeton to a .236 hitting percentage in a 3-0 home win in Boston.

Ibe, Nussbaum, Sklaver and Smith have helped lead Princeton to an incredible 69-28 record over the last four years, as well as two trips to the NCAA tournament. After losing the first three Ivy League matches of their careers, they have gone 43-8 in league play since. Sklaver and Ibe both earned All-Ivy honors during the 2017 championship season, while Nussbaum was the starting setter for the 2015 championship team. Smith provided depth at the rightside position and had a huge performance in a key comeback win at Brown during the 2015 championship season.