ITHACA, N.Y. — The men's tennis will look to climb back into the Ivy League race this weekend when it hosts a pair of pivotal matches against nationally-ranked squads Dartmouth and Harvard at Reis Tennis Center. The match against the Big Green starts at 1 p.m. Saturday, then the Big Red and Crimson will tangle at 1 p.m. Sunday in a meeting of two of the teams that shared the Ivy League title in 2017.
 
Cornell (7-9, 0-2 Ivy League) is coming off a pair of narrow 4-3 losses last weekend to Princeton and Penn to kick off the league schedule. Junior Jake Hansen won a pair of three-set matches at No. 5 singles, pushing his personal winning streak to five matches. Sophomore Joseph McAllister was also strong from the bottom of the order, posting a pair of victories at No. 6. Most frequently competing at No. 1, junior David Volfson won his seventh consecutive match in Friday's match against the Tigers before a loss Sunday against the Quakers. He is now 8-4 on the season in singles and alongside his doubles partner, McAllister, he boasts the team's best winning percentage in both singles and doubles.
 
Dartmouth is 16-5 overall and 2-1 in Ivy League play after rebounding from a 4-0 loss to Harvard on March 31 with 5-2 victories over Yale and Brown last weekend, coming in at 32nd in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's national rankings this week. There is a potential matchup of the last two Ivy League Rookies of the Year between Cornell's Volfson (2016) and Dartmouth's Charlie Broom (2017) at No. 1 singles. The Big Green has had the most success in singles from the middle of the order, with Max Fliegner 11-3 and David Horneffer 13-3 from the Nos. 2 and 3 spots. Broom and Horneffer are the nation's 58th-ranked doubles team.
 
The Big Green holds a 45-23-2 advantage in the all-time series against Cornell, though the Big Red has won seven of the last 11 meetings. That includes a 4-2 decision over Dartmouth in last year's Ivy League match in Hanover, N.H., where Volfson and  sophomores Lev Kazakov and Pietro Rimondini all won in singles.
 
Harvard is the current leader in the Ivy League standings at 3-0, improving to 19-3 overall after eking out 4-3 victories against Brown and Yale last weekend. The Crimson is now ranked 29th in the country with five straight victories since a Feb. 17 loss to No. 24 Memphis. Kenny Tao is 11-1 in No. 1 singles and 11-7 in doubles when pair with Logan Weber at the top spot. Andy Zhou is 13-5 from primarily the No. 2 position, and Robert Wrzesinski leads the team with a 16-3 mark from down the order.
 
Harvard leads the all-time series, 63-14, though the programs have split the last 12 meetings. The Big Red won last year's Ivy League meeting in Cambridge, Mass., handing the Crimson its lone league loss of the season. Rimondini won at No. 5 singles and senior Daniel Grunberger clinched the match by rallying to win in three sets at No. 6. Harvard then defeated Cornell, 4-1, in the semifinals of the ECAC Indoor Championships a couple months ago. Grunberger accounted for the Big Red's lone point, defeating Wrzesinski in straight sets at No. 4.
 
Both matches are open to the public and free to attend with free pizza provided to the first 100 fans each day.