ITHACA, N.Y. – The women's tennis team will conclude its season this weekend with its final two Ivy League matches. The Big Red plays host to 58th-ranked Princeton at 2 p.m. Friday at Reis Tennis Center, then takes on Penn at noon Sunday in Philadelphia.
 
Cornell (7-8, 0-5 Ivy) is still in search of its first league victory after losses last weekend to #49 Yale and Brown. Freshman Alexandra D'Ascenzo accounted for the Big Red's point in a 6-1 defeat against Yale on Saturday, winning her match at No. 2 singles. Freshman Marika Cusick (No. 3) and senior Shannon Comolli (No. 5) then won singles matches the following day against Brown, but the Bears left Ithaca with a 5-2 victory.
 
Cusick leads the team with a 11-4 record in dual-match singles, followed closely by D'Ascenzo (10-4). Comolli (6-5) is also better than .500 in singles play this season. D'Ascenzo and junior Dena Tanenbaum are the 79th-ranked doubles team in the country by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
 
Friday's match is pivotal for Princeton (16-5, 5-0), which is currently atop the Ivy League standings and vaulted up 11 spots in the national rankings last week. The Tigers would clinch the title with a win Friday and another against second-place Columbia later in the weekend. Lindsay Graff is 16-4 from the No. 1 singles position, and a perfect 5-0 in Ivy play. Amanda Muliawan is traditionally placed at the No. 2 position, and Alanna Wolf – while often competing at No. 3 – is ranked 99th in the country.
 
Penn (6-9, 0-5) is coming off a pair of narrow 4-3 losses to Dartmouth and Harvard. The Quakers won the doubles point in both of those matches, and junior Sol Eskenazi also won her No. 1 singles match in both contests. Sonya Latycheva won at No. 3 against Dartmouth, and senior Stephanie Do was victorious at No. 5 vs. Harvard.
 
The Big Red is just 5-28 all-time against the Quakers, but the field has been leveled in recent years. Cornell won last year's meeting, 4-3, to record its program-record 14th victory of the season. Cornell also won the 2010 clash at Penn, 6-1. Princeton holds an even wider margin of victory in its series with Cornell, winning 31 of 33 meetings dating back to 1973. Those Big Red victories were in 1995 and 1996, which coincided with the best Ivy League finishes in program history. Princeton won last year's meeting, 5-2, with Cornell securing the doubles point and current senior Ryann Young winning her match at No. 3 singles.