MATCH INFORMATION
MATCH #23: Cornell at Princeton
MATCH TIME: Friday, Nov. 11, 2016; 7:00 p.m.
MATCH SITE: Dillon Gymnasium (Princeton, N.J.)
SERIES RECORD: Princeton leads, 52-19
LAST MEETING: Cornell won, 3-2; Oct. 7, 2016
2016 RECORDS: Cornell (11-11, 5-7 Ivy); Princeton (17-4, 11-1 Ivy)
LIVE STATS: http://www.sidearmstats.com/princeton/wvball/
LIVE VIDEO: http://www.ivyleaguedigitalnetwork.com/cornell
 
MATCH #24: Cornell at Penn
MATCH TIME: Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016; 5:00 p.m.
MATCH SITE: The Palestra (Philadelphia, Pa.)
SERIES RECORD: Penn leads, 43-26
LAST MEETING: Princeton won, 3-0; Oct. 8, 2016
* 2016 RECORDS: Cornell (11-11, 5-7 Ivy); Penn (10-14, 5-7 Ivy)
LIVE STATS: TBA
LIVE VIDEO: http://www.ivyleaguedigitalnetwork.com/cornell
 
THE MATCHUP: The Cornell volleyball team enters the final weekend of play with an opportunity to amass its most Ivy League wins since the 2008 season. The weekend kicks off with the Big Red traveling to Princeton on Friday, Nov. 11 at 7 p.m., before heading to Penn on Saturday, Nov. 12 at 5 p.m. Live video stream will be available for both contests on the Ivy League Digital Network.
 
THE SERIES VS. PRINCETON: The Cornell series with Princeton began in the 1974 season, a 2-0 Big Red victory. The Tigers have dominated the series since, owning a 52-19 record against Cornell. The teams split the series in 2013, but the Tigers have won five straight.
 
LAST TIME VS. THE TIGERS: Ivy League leader Princeton won its ninth consecutive match and improved to 5-0 in the conference when it defeated Cornell, 3-0 (25-16, 25-11, 25-23) on Oct. 8. Cornell was led by Kit McCarty's six kills, while Maddy Sroufe hit a team best .300 (4-1-10). Senior Alyssa Phelps handed out 13 assists, had five digs and posted four block assists, while junior libero Kiley McPeek finished with a team-high 14 digs. Macey Wilson also posted four block assists. Princeton was led by Brittany Ptak's 10 kills, .364 hitting percentage (10-2-22), and six total blocks. Setter Jessica Harris finished with 27 assists, posted three kills on just six attempts (.500), and registered nine digs. Cara Mattaliano had a match-high 15 digs, while libero Kelly Matthews finished with 13.
 
THE SERIES VS. PENN: As is true for the series against Princeton, the Big Red and Penn first met in 1974, a 2-0 Big Red victory. The Quakers went on to dominate the series for the rest of the 1970s and '80s, accounting for its 43-26 all-time lead, but since 2000 the series has been much more equal with Penn owning a slim 16-12 advantage.
 
LAST TIME VS. THE QUAKERS: After three incredibly close matches to open the Ivy League season, the Big Red earned its first conference victory, downing Penn, 3-2, on Oct. 7 in Newman Arena. After losing the first set, 17-25, Cornell came back to win the next two, 25-23 and 25-21, before the Quakers forced a fifth set with a 25-17 win in the fourth. In the decisive fifth set, the Big Red jumped out to 6-1 lead and then held off a late Penn push to win, 15-9. Cornell was led by rightside hitter Kit McCarty, who posted a team-high 16 kills and an impressive .368 hitting percentage (16-2-38). Outside hitters Carla Sganderlla and Emily Wemhoff chipped in 13 kills apiece, with Sganderlla posting a double-double with 10 digs and Wemhoff coming one dig shy. Middle blocker Jenna Phelps was solid with 11 kills and three block assists, while freshman Jada Stackhouse entered the match late in the first set and finished with six kills with no errors on 16 attempts. Senior setter Alyssa Phelps finished with 49 assists and 19 digs, while libero Kiley McPeek posted a match-high 21 digs. Defensive specialists Lily Barber and Chelsea Sincox finished with 11 and nine digs, respectively. As a team, Cornell hit .262 (64-19-172) and defensively finished with five team blocks in front of 85 digs. Penn had just one player reach double-digits, as Courtney Quinn had a match-high 22 kills (22-2-60; .333), but Taylor Cooper was also outstanding, hitting a blistering .562 (9-0-16). Setter Sydney Morton finished with 45 assists and 12 digs, while libero Michelle Pereira finished with 20 digs.
 
THE HEAD COACH: Trudy Vande Berg is in her second season as The Wendy Schaenen '79 Head Coach Of Volleyball at Cornell (17-29, .370) ... Vande Berg became the 11th head coach in Cornell volleyball history in March 2015 after spending three seasons as the Big Red's top assistant coach ... Prior to her time at Cornell, Vande Berg spent time as an assistant coach at North Florida, Duke, and Iowa State and as a volunteer assistant at Wisconsin. She also served as head coach of the Team Iowa Ice professional club in the Premier Volleyball League, where she guided the team to the championship in her second year at the helm.
  
PLAYER OF THE WEEK NOTES:
* After her 41-assist performance in a 3-1 victory over Columbia, Alyssa Phelps earned her first Ivy League honor, being named Player of the Week. She was the Big Red's first Ivy League Player of the Week award winner since Breanna Wong on Sept. 17, 2013.
* Sophomore Carla Sganderlla was named the Ivy League Player of the Week for the first time of her career on Oct. 31 after helping the Big Red split a pair of games at Yale and Brown. She posted back-to-back 20-kill performances on the weekend, averaging an incredible 5.0 kills per set, and hitting better than .300 in both matches. Sganderlla also finished with a pair of double-doubles, with 10 digs apiece vs. the Bulldogs and Bears.
* Sganderlla and Phelps are the first pair of Cornell volleyball teammates to take home the honor in the same season since Emily Borman '09 and Megan Mushovic '10 did so in 2007.  
 
RISING IVY: With its win over Dartmouth last weekend, Cornell has posted the most conference wins since 2012 (5). If the Big Red earns a win this weekend, it will be the most for the program since the 2008 squad went 9-5 and finished third in the Ivy League.   
 
DOUBLE-DIGIT WINS: With its win over Brown on Oct. 29, Cornell posted double-digit victories for the first time since the 2008 campaign. The following week, the Big Red defeated Dartmouth to earn its most wins in a season (11) since the 2006 Ivy League championship squad won 18 games.  
 
NON-CONFERENCE SUCCESS: With its 3-2 win over Binghamton, Cornell wrapped up its non-conference schedule with a 6-4 record, amassing the most non-conference wins in a season since 2006 (7) ... It also gave the Big Red its first winning record out of conference since the 2005 squad went 7-4 in non-league play.
 
FINISHING STRONG: Under second-year head coach Trudy Vande Berg, Cornell is 7-5 in matches that go five sets.
 
HEAVY HITTERS: The Big Red enters the week with a .218 hitting percentage, a mark that would be the seventh best in school history if the season ended today.
 
CLOSE LOSSES: Cornell has lost 27 sets in Ivy League play, one-third of which (nine) have been by two points.
 
NCAA RANKINGS: Entering the week, Carla Sganderlla's .44 service aces per set ranks 25th in the nation.
 
IN THE IVY RANKINGS: Several Cornell players are raked in the top 10 of various Ivy League statistical categories, including:
* Macey Wilson – seventh in hitting percentage (.308)
* Kit McCarty – eighth in hitting percentage (.287)
* Carla Sganderlla – third in kills per set (3.15)
* Kit McCarty – 10th in kills per set (2.74)
* Alyssa Phelps – third in assists per set (8.56)
* Carla Sganderlla – second in service aces per set (0.44)
* Macey Wilson – third in blocks (1.04)
* Lily Barber – 10th in digs per set (3.17)
 
TEAM IVY RANKINGS: As a team, Cornell ranks in the top half of the Ivy League rankings in:
* Assists (second – 12.31)
* Kills (second – 12.98)
* Service aces (second – 1.44) 
* Hitting percentage (third – .218)
* Blocks (third – 2.00) 
 
SETTING UP: With her 50 assists vs. Brown on Oct. 29, senior setter Alyssa Phelps became just the second player in Cornell volleyball history, and 20th in the history of the Ivy League, to surpass 3,000 career assists. Shen enters the final weekend of her collegiate career with 3,097 assists.
 
DIG IT: Alyssa Phelps ranks 19th in Cornell history with 689 career digs.
 
OFFENSIVE POWER: Senior Macey Wilson enters the weekend ranked 15th in Cornell history with 611 career kills. She also sits fifth in Cornell history with a career hitting percentage of .282.
 
BIG BLOCKER: Senior Macey Wilson ranks 14th in Cornell history for career solo blocks (46), needing just one more to move past Traci Mizoguchi '96 in 14th place. She is also third in block assists (301) and fifth in total blocks (347), needing 22 and 19, respectively, to move up a notch.

ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM:  Juniors Kit McCarty and Emily Wemnoff were named to the Cornell Invitational All-Tournament … Junior Maddy Sroufe was named to the UMKC Kangaroo Klassic All-Tournament Team … McCarty and sophomore Carla Sganderlla were name to the Bucknell Invitational All-Tournament Team. 
 
DID YOU KNOW:
* Alyssa Phelps is a research assistant in the Ophir Integrative Neuroethology Lab at Cornell … Alyssa and Jenna Phelps are sisters.
* Kiley McPeek has 10 relatives that are Cornell alumni. Her father, Jeff '82, played sprint football for the Big Red, while her great uncle Richard Boerner was a member of the Cornell heavyweight varsity eight that won the IRA national championship in 1958 … This past summer, she did an internship in Istanbul, Turkey and was in the country during the attempted coup d'état.
* Kit McCarty is one of eight children – she has four brothers and three sisters.
* Zoe Lequeux is a French citizen.
* Carla Sganderlla can speak Portuguese ... Her brother attends Cornell.
* Kara Rogers lived in Germany for a year … Her sister is a member of the Yale swimming team.
* Maddy Sroufe's younger sister plays volleyball at VCU.
* This past summer, Chelsea Sincox worked for Congressman Pete Olson … Last summer she interned at NASA.
* Jada Stackhouse is a distant cousin of 18-year NBA veteran Jerry Stackhouse.
 
SEASON OPENERS: With its win over Colgate on Sept. 3, Cornell improved to 29-14-1 all-time in season openers. Since 1995, the Big Red is an impressive 16-5 in the first match of the season ... Coach Vande Berg is a perfect 2-0 in season openers.
 
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: The Big Red added six freshmen – as Samanta Arenas, Lily Barber, Sophia Beaudoin, Jenna Phelps, Katie Randolph and Jada Stackhouse – to the roster for the 2016 season. The six student-athletes hail from six different states and the group consists of two middle blockers, two outside hitters, one setter, and one defensive specialist.