CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — 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.
The Hoehn Cup features the nation's ninth- through 16th-ranked teams, and Cornell (6-10) enters the weekend ranked sixth in the bracket and 14th overall in the country. That lands the Big Red a quarterfinal match against No. 11 Navy at 3 p.m. Friday.
The Big Red finished second in the Hoehn Cup last season and 10th in the country in the CSA's final rankings. It spent the entirety of this season above where it currently stands in the national rankings (10th, 11th or 13th), but there has been a lot of movement throughout the year among most of the teams in the Hoehn Cup field.
Cornell, which last won Hoehn Cups in 1993, 2006 and 2007, starts play against a Midshipmen squad that it didn't see during the regular season. Cornell last saw Navy on Jan. 13, 2014, when the Big Red recorded a 8-1 victory to improve to 14-12 all-time against the Midshipmen.
Navy is 18-5 on the season, moving up two spots in most recent national rankings after a 5-4 victory over Franklin & Marshall last weekend. Jack Herold is 15-7 from the No. 1 position, and Senen Ubina is 14-6 from No. 2. The Mids have been ranked anywhere from 11th to 15th throughout the year.
Cornell's victories have been evenly split between each third of the ladder. Junior
Andy Muran leads the team in individual wins with an 8-8 record, exclusively competing within the top three positions alongside senior co-captain
Harry Freeman and sophomore
Perry Hanson (both 6-10). Junior
Alex Jung and senior
Augie Jones have seven victories apiece from primarily the middle positions in the order.
One of the other Hoehn Cup quarterfinals, No. 10 Princeton vs. No. 15 Bates, will run simultaneous to the action between Cornell and Navy. The winners of those two matches will meet in the semifinals at 3 p.m. Saturday, and the losers will meet at the same time in the consolation semifinals. Friday's other quarterfinals start at 12:30 p.m., featuring top seed and No. 9 Dartmouth vs. No. 16 Franklin & Marshall and No. 12 Western Ontario vs. No. 13 George Washington. All of the Hoehn Cup's matches on Friday and Saturday will be staged at Harvard's Murr Center.
All four placement matches will start between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The championship match will remain at Murr Center, while the 11th-, 13th- and 15th-place matches are scheduled for Brooks School in North Andover, Mass.
The CSA has also announced that SQUASHTV will offer a free broadcast of the team championships. The primary focus will be on the main court and subsequently the 'A Division's Potter Cup, but additional cameras will cover action on some of Murr Center's other courts. The stream can be found at www.psaworldtour.com/tv
