Princeton Opens EIVA Sprint With Crucial Road Showdown At #14 George Mason

LINKS: Live Video l Live Stats l EIVA Standings

After completing yet another challenging non-league portion of the schedule, the Princeton men's volleyball team can now turn its full focus on the final sprint of the EIVA season. That stretch starts Friday at 7 pm when the Tigers head to Fairfax, Va., to take on #14 George Mason; if the Tigers take care of business there, and then over the next two weeks at home, they can make sure it's the last league road trip of the season.

Princeton comes into the weekend with an 8-1 mark in the EIVA, good enough for a 1.5-match lead over both George Mason and Penn State. The Tigers also have wins already this season against both teams, meaning a victory over either (they host Penn State in the season finale on April 13) would clinch a tiebreaker over that team should playoff seeding come down to it.

The Tigers are coming off a winless trip to Provo, Utah, but they certainly proved they were competitive against two of the nation's best programs. Princeton opened with a marathon 3-2 loss to #8 BYU, and then it pushed now #1 Hawaii in a couple tight sets of a 3-0 loss; nine of Princeton's 12 losses this season have come to teams that were ranked in the AVCA poll at the time, and six were to teams ranked in the Top 10.

Three of the EIVA's top four hitters will be on the court Friday night in a rematch of the 2018 EIVA semifinal, when Princeton upset the top-seeded Patriots to advance to its first league final since 2014. George Mason's Hayden Wagner ranks second in the EIVA with 4.34 kills per set, while the Tiger duo of Parker Dixon (3.48) and George Huhmann (3.19) rank third and fourth, respectively. Princeton is the only team to have two players rank in the top seven in EIVA kills, as well as in the top six in EIVA points. Those two players combined for 29 kills in Princeton's 3-1 comeback win over Mason in February.

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