ITHACA, N.Y. – The women's tennis team opens the home portion of its Ivy League schedule this weekend, playing host to Yale at noon Saturday and Brown at noon Sunday at Reis Tennis Center.
 
Cornell (7-6, 0-3 Ivy League) enters the weekend on the heels of three 6-1 defeats, all at the hands of league opponents. After opening with a loss at Columbia, the Big Red made a swing through New England last weekend with similar results. Freshman Marika Cusick is 2-1 from the No. 2 singles spot in Ivy matches, and she teamed with classmate Alexandra D'Ascenzo to win the No. 1 doubles match last Friday at Dartmouth.
 
Junior Dena Tanenbaum has competed exclusively from the No. 1 singles position this season with a 6-7 record. Cusick (10-3), D'Ascenzo (9-3) and senior Shannon Comolli (5-4) are all better than .500 in singles play this season. D'Ascenzo and Tanenbaum are the 60th-ranked doubles team in the country by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
 
Yale (9-8, 1-1) is ranked 59th after splitting its opening league weekend. The Bulldogs dropped Friday's match against Princeton, 4-3, before responding with a victory by the same score the following day against Penn. Sophomore Madeleine Hamilton and junior Hanna Yu typically compete from the top of the singles lineup, and Hamilton teams with sophomore Ree Ree Li to comprise the 65th-ranked doubles team in the nation.
 
Yale leads the all-time series with Cornell, 29-3, and has won the last 16 meetings. The Big Red's last victory came on April 12, 1997. That win actually gave Cornell three straight wins against the Bulldogs — accounting for all of its victories in the series. Yale won last year's match, 6-1, with Big Red senior Ryann Young and junior Lauren Frazier winning their No. 2 doubles match in a tiebreaker. The teams also met during the Yale Invitational in January, but there were no officials match scores.
 
Brown (12-6, 1-1) also opened Ivy play last weekend with a win against Penn (5-2) and loss to Princeton (6-1). Junior Sarah Kandath accounted for the lone point against the Tigers with a straight-set victory at No. 4 singles. Freshman Dayna Lord and sophomore Hannah Camhi have been competing atop the singles lineup and teaming up to form the No. 1 doubles combination.
 
The Big Red has won the last two Ivy League matches against the Bears, both by scores of 4-3. Cornell won the final two singles matches to take the decision last year, including Frazier's three-set victory at the No. 6 spot. The teams actually met earlier this season in the first round of the ECAC Indoor Championships on Feb. 7 in New York. Freshman Alexandra D'Ascenzo helped the Big Red secure the doubles point before going on to win her No. 3 singles match in straight sets, but Brown came up with a 4-2 victory. It was just the latest in a long line of close matches between the teams, as just one of the last 14 meetings between the squads has featured a margin of victory greater than two points. The Bears hold a 24-9 lead in the series.