The Bears continued Ivy play last weekend facing the Princeton Tigers and Penn Quakers.
In a dramatic five-set match Bruno defeated the Tigers — ending a 12-match losing streak against the Ivy foe.
In a back-and-forth match, the Bears led in hitting percentage, blocks and digs. “Everyone contributed a lot and everyone played really well,” said Amanda Nickel ’14.
The all-around effort yielded four players with double-digit kills and five players with double-digit blocks.
Though Bruno lost a decisive first set 25-17, trailing for the entire set after an early 3-1 lead, the team was not discouraged because “we had fans come and it picked up our energy,” said Thea Derrough ’14.
With this newfound energy, Brown rebounded to take the second set 25-19.
By the end of the second set, Derrough said she had a strong feeling the team was going to win.
Bruno continued to rack up points as they cruised to a third-set victory, 25-18.
In the fourth set, the Bears led 24-22 and secured two match points, giving the team the opportunity to clinch the set. But a resilient Princeton battled off both match points and went on to win the set 26-24 — taking the match to a decisive fifth set.
In the fifth, the Bears found themselves in an early hole, down 11-7. Nickel said the team was extremely determined to win the fifth game, especially after falling behind.
“In previous years we have lost five (set matches) and it was really on the older girls in the team to pull us through,” Nickel said.
A couple of important kills by the Bears pulled them back into the set to win 16-14.
“Even if the score was tight, we had energy, and we knew we were going to win,” Derrough said.
Bruno’s three-match Ivy winning streak, however, was broken later in the weekend when a strong Quaker squad defeated the Bears. Penn controlled most of the match, only giving up the lead three times.
In each of the sets the Bears fought to close the gap, but Penn came up with a couple big points to maintain its lead.
“We struggled with serves,” Nickel said. “We would start off with a bad pass and give an easier shot over to them.”
“(Penn) played very well, we had a lot of trouble getting kills against them,” said Taylor Bantle ’15. The Bears only had 33 kills compared to the Quakers 41.
The Bears hit the road to take on Columbia and Cornell this weekend.
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