M. Volleyball Dominates Yale

The Harvard men's volleyball team used a time-honored technique for breaking losing streaks last night: play the club team.

Harvard had lost eight in a row. The Yale men's volleyball team is not funded by the university. The Malkin Athletic Center was already reserved.

And with that, the Crimson threw the monkey off its back in a 15-13, 15-2, 15-12 sweep, improving its record to 4-11 (0-3 Eastern Conference).

This long-awaited victory doesn't mean that everything is rosy for Harvard, however. The match could not have been called pretty, and the Crimson left the court still feeling that its potential remains unfulfilled.

"I think [the passing] was moderate," co-captain Abbas Hyderi said. "We only ran [quick-sets to the middle] 10 or 20 percent of the time. That's indicative of how good the passing is--if you're running those a lot, you know your passing is on, and if not, then it's not there."

What this meant was that Harvard couldn't take advantage of Yale's own passing woes, which were much greater than Harvard's. Especially in the first game, the Elis would score a side out even if their passer misdirected a serve receive, because Bulldog dinks and rolled spikes found their way to the floor too often.

Not that the Crimson was losing or anything. Punishing kills by sophomore Ryan Oliver and senior Ryan Westendorf kept the first set even most of the way, until a Westendorf jump serve closed out the scoring at 15-13.

In the second game, Harvard went to its bench and juggled its offense around a bit. Instead of Hyderi setting by himself, he switched off the duties with sophomore Evan Beachy, depending on who was playing the back row.

This seemed to work, with the Crimson winning the game 15-2, and it may be the way that Harvard will look for the rest of the season. The other setting formations that Harvard has used--Beachy or Hyderi for every rotation--has not produced wins.

"He wants Evan's passing, but he wants me to set as well," Hyderi said. "It's kind of like a compromise."

Other key factors in the second game included Harvard's blocking, which began to show life and took away Yale's short hits that pestered the home team in the first game. Also, some of the players off the bench--such as freshman Kalon Morris and sophomore Jim Rothschild--continued the Crimson's spiking success.

"Hopefully we're doing better and it wasn't just their bad blocking," Morris said, "but that remains to be seen.

In the final set, the Elis were obviously psychologically out of the game, with passes going all over the place. However, Harvard seemed to just coast at times, playing uninspired ball and ending up with a 15-12 clinch.

By itself, the win had little meaning. The Crimson instead hopes to use it as a springboard for its difficult upcoming league games against the likes of Princeton (March 2) and Springfield (March 13). Yale  0 Harvard  3