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W. Volleyball Rolls With Victories Over Yale, Brown

The dust of the Ivy League came to the Malkin Athletic Center, and the Harvard women’s volleyball team got out its brooms.

The Crimson (12-6, 7-1) scored a pair of 3-0 wins this weekend over Brown and Yale, keeping Harvard a game ahead of second-place Cornell (12-6, 6-2) in the Ivy standings just past the halfway point in league play.

“Right now being first in the league is huge for us,” co-captain and middle hitter Kaego Ogbechie said. “It makes it that much more exciting to play a team that you’ve already beaten. You know what they run, you know their offense, and you know their defense. We’re really anxious to go through the second [run] through the league.”

The Big Red defeated Princeton—the only Ivy team to beat the Crimson—3-1 this weekend to move a half-game ahead of the third-place Tigers (14-5, 5-2).

Freshman outside hitter Laura Mahon led the team in kills with 23 and chipped in 20 digs on the weekend, while Ogbechie added 22 kills and paced Harvard with 24 digs.

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HARVARD 3, BROWN 0

Most of the time sweeps are based solely on talent.

This one was about will.

Harvard allowed Brown to get to the midway points first in games two and three, but closed furiously in each frame en route to a 3-0 (30-21, 30-26, 30-27) victory on Saturday afternoon.

Senior outside hitter Nilly Schweitzer led the Crimson in digs with 11 and Ogbechie posted a match-high 14 kills without committing a single attack error.

With Harvard trailing 15-14 in the third game, Ogbechie rattled off three straight kills to put the Crimson ahead. After the Bears rallied to reclaim the lead 19-18, Ogbechie went to work again, posting a thunderous kill and hitting a low serve that bounced off the top of the net and fell straight down on the Brown side for an ace.

“Kaego is a phenomenal athlete and when she does something, she can change the momentum,” Harvard coach Jennifer Weiss said.

After a Schweitzer kill pushed Harvard to match point at 29-24, the Bears rattled off three straight points before committing a net violation that gave the Crimson a 30-27 win.

The anticlimactic finish mirrored that of the night before, when Yale staved off two straight Harvard match points, but brushed the net during the third to give the Crimson the match.

“This week we focused on eliminating our own unforced errors, and it’s interesting to see how the opposing team’s errors stand out,” Ogbechie said.

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