Volleyball Team Faces Loaded Draw — Including A Pair Of Recent Sweet 16 Teams — At Towson Invite

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Live Stats: Long Beach State l Towson l Missouri l Ohio State
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Princeton head coach Sabrina King saw plenty go right for her squad this past weekend, as the Tigers swept three opponents to clinch the Ellis Rowland Memorial Tournament title. If her team posts the same results this weekend, people throughout the NCAA volleyball landscape will start to take notice.

The three-time reigning Ivy League champion Princeton women's volleyball team will head to Towson, Md., at the end of the week to compete in four matches at the Towson Invitational. Half of the competition will have competed in the NCAA Sweet 16 over the last two seasons, and that doesn't even include a host program coming off a 2-1 weekend in Puerto Rico.

It will be a good test for a Princeton team picked first in the inaugural Ivy League preseason poll. While Princeton is still weeks away from its Sept. 21 Ivy League opener in Philadelphia, the Tigers backed up that poll in impressive fashion at Colgate last weekend with a trio of 3-0 wins. While King saw plenty of strong efforts throughout her roster, none matched the dominance of All-Ivy junior Devon Peterkin, who would earn tournament MVP honors, as well as the Ivy League Player of the Week award.

Princeton will open the Towson Invitational Thursday at noon in a showdown with Long Beach State (4-4). LBSU, coming off a five-set win over Texas Tech on Monday night, has been led by the 1-2 punch of Hailey Harward and Kashauna Williams, who have combined to average more than seven points per set this fall.

An all-Tigers showdown will take place at 6 pm Thursday night, as Princeton faces the host school inside Secu Arena. Towson enters the weekend with a 3-3 record, though they went 2-1 last weekend with wins over both Miami and Xavier at the Puerto Rico Classic.

Friday may hold the most impressive set of opponents that Princeton has played in a single day in program history. Princeton will open at 10:30 am against Missouri (yet another set of Tigers), a 2017 NCAA Sweet 16 qualifier who enters the weekend with a 5-1 record. Like Towson, Missouri competed at the Puerto Rico Invitational, where it went undefeated. Middle Alyssa Munlyn, a returning First-Team All-SEC honoree, averages nearly 1.7 blocks per set and is hitting .415 for the season.

Princeton will end the gauntlet of a trip at 4 pm Friday when it faces Ohio State, a 2016 NCAA Sweet 16 qualifier. While that will be Princeton's fourth match of the weekend, it will be the first for a Buckeye team that has gone 5-1 on the season (each of Princeton's four opponents this week will be playing their first match of the Invitational). Like Missouri, Ohio State has another dominant middle, as Lauren Witte averages more than 3.1 kills and 1.0 blocks on the season, while also hitting .496.

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