ITHACA, N.Y. — The women's tennis team will look to rebound in Ivy League play this weekend when it hosts Princeton at 1 p.m. Friday before hitting the road to take on Penn at 1 p.m. Sunday in Philadelphia.
 
Cornell (6-8, 0-1 Ivy League) is coming off a 6-1 loss to Columbia on Saturday in its first league match since securing the program's first Ivy League title in 2017. Senior Madison Stevens accounted for the visitors' lone point with a straight-set victory at No. 5 singles before the Lions pulled away by winning the final three singles matches in either third sets or super tiebreakers. Freshman Cheyenne Lilienthal continues to pace the team in singles victories with a 7-7 record, and junior Michelle Wang is 7-6 in doubles. Senior Priyanka Shah is a combined 11-11 while competing exclusively at the No. 1 spot in both singles and doubles.
 
Princeton (13-3, 1-0), which joined Cornell and Dartmouth in sharing the Ivy crown last season, has emerged as a front-runner again this season with a national ranking of 46th going into last weekend. The Tigers won 12 of their first 13 dual matches before dropping a pair of contests in Houston two weeks ago against William & Mary and Rice. Princeton then rebounded with a 5-2 victory over Penn last Saturday. The Tigers' top two singles entries, Katrine Steffensen (10-2 record at No. 1) and Stephanie Schrage (10-4 mark at No. 2) were both nationally ranked recently, but fell out of this week's top 125. Schrage and Nicole Kalhorn are ranked in doubles, coming in at 89th.
 
Cornell has defeated Princeton four times in 40 all-time meetings between the programs since 1973, but two of those victories came during a memorable 2016-17 campaign for the Big Red. The first came in a neutral-site match at the ECAC Indoor Championships, then Cornell followed that up with another win during the Ivy League schedule in April. Stevens won both times in singles. The other two Big Red victories against the Tigers came in 1995 and 1996 — which coincides with the program's best all-time Ivy League finishes.
 
Penn (7-9, 0-1) had won matches against Temple on March 17 and St. John's on March 24 before the loss to Princeton last weekend. Marta Kowalska is a team-best 9-2 in singles, where she competes anywhere from No. 3 to No. 5 in the order. Lina Qostal competes at the top spot with a 6-9 mark, and she is 5-6 at No. 1 doubles with Ashley Zhu as her primary partner.
 
Cornell is just 6-31 all-time against the Quakers, but the field has been leveled recently with the Big Red emerging victorious in two of the last four years. Cornell earned a 5-2 victory in its last visit to Philadelphia in 2016, simultaneously setting a program record with its 15th win of the season. The Quakers then won last year, 4-3, to hand the Big Red the first of its two league losses despite a win from Iinuma at No. 5 singles.