How do you spell improvement?

Fans of the Harvard women's volleyball team spell it S-P-I-K-E-R-S.

After having trouble in the early part of the season, Harvard has turned its play around and is now beginning to show how good a team it really is.

The Crimson (4-3 Ivy, 9-8 overall) defeated Brown (3-3 Ivy), 8-15, 15-11, 15-5, 15-9 last night in front of a tough Bruin crowd in Providence. The win is the fourth in a row for Harvard, which has downed Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton in recent action.

As usual, the hitting of seniors Manda Schossberger and Dani Cunnigham and junior Peri Wallace was superb. Schossberger had 11 kills, Wallace nine and Cunnigham eight.

What differs from the beginning of the season is the quality of Harvard's setting. The Crimson setters--Carolyn Burger and Cunnigham--only commited three setting errors the entire game, a great improvement from the start of the season.

The Crimson faced its biggest test of the match in the third set after Brown went up, 7-1. Harvard kept its cool and rattled off 12 straight points with Cunnigham serving into the weak part of Brown's lineup.

"We are just playing better and better," Schossberger said. "We are continually gaining confidence every time out."

The win was an important one for the Crimson as the Ivy League season is quickly drawing to a close. Currently the Crimson is expected to finish third in the Ivy League standings behind now-undefeated Cornell and Yale.

Harvard's next test will come the weekend of November 3 when the Crimson hosts the Harvard Invitational Volleyball Tournament at Malkin Athletic Center. Harvard Coach Wayne Lem has scheduled some tough opponents for the tournament--including Yale, Farleigh Dickinson, the University of Massachusetts and Brown.