NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The men's squash team will attempt to win the fourth Hoehn Cup in program history when it competes at the College Squash Association's 'B' Division national championship this weekend at Yale.
The Hoehn Cup features the nation's ninth- through 16th-ranked teams, and Cornell (7-8) enters the weekend ranked second in the bracket and 10th overall in the country. That lands the Big Red a quarterfinal match against No. 15 Middlebury at 9 a.m. Friday.
The Big Red finished third in the Hoehn Cup last season and 11th in the country in the CSA's final rankings. It spent the entirety of this season within two spots of there, but finished its regular season with a spectacular sweep of four matches in three days against No. 13 Princeton, No. 12 Franklin & Marshall, No. 5 Penn and No. 24 Hobart. That moved the Big Red up three spots to its current standing of 10th. The Big Red last won Hoehn Cups in 1993, 2006 and 2007.
Thirty of Cornell's 67 individual victories have come from the bottom third of the order, led by a 10-4 record from freshman
Ben Francis. Senior tri-captain
Graham Dietz ranks second on the team with an 8-5 record from primarily the No. 7 position, and freshman
Alex Jung has seven victories in just nine appearances. Junior
Harry Freeman anchors the No. 1 position in the order, and has played some memorable five-set matches of late — including the clincher in a 5-4 victory earlier this month at Princeton after the host Tigers had taken a 4-0 lead.
Middlebury is 12-4 on the season, though one of those losses was an 8-1 setback against Cornell on Nov. 21 at the Willams Round Robin. In the Panthers' most recent action, the squad finished third at the NESCAC championships after victories against Bowdoin and Williams bookended an upset loss to Bates.
The Hoehn Cup's other three quarterfinals will run simultaneous to the action between Cornell and Middlebury. Those matchups are No. 11 George Washington vs. No. 14 Navy, No. 9 Drexel vs. No. 16 Brown, and No. 12 Franklin & Marshall vs. No. 13 Princeton. The winner of the Cornell-Middlebury match will then take on the winner of the GW-Navy match at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, while the losers will meet in a consolation semifinal at 9 a.m. Saturday. All four placement matches will start at 9 or 11:30 a.m. Sunday, and all of the bracket's matches played at Yale with one exception — the 15-16 playoff will be contested at The Hopkins School.
