"[Vegter's] serves were just amazing," Pankau said. "In practice, we've been working on serving and receiving, especially against tougher servers, but he was just very hard to hit."

"[Princeton] won the serving war," Wilson said. "They're just a very good serving team, and they generally put more pressure on us to receive."

The Crimson did not, however, walk away from the match empty-handed. It learned lessons from a physically bigger Tiger team that it can use in the future.

"We definitely need to clean up our blocking," Wilson said. "That's the area that really hurt us during the match."

"We are going to have to work on playing against bigger teams," Gaughan said. "That's something that we're not used to, and we need to be able to adjust to that for the rest of the season."

Rutgers 3, Harvard 0

The Crimson had hoped to bounce back after the disappointing loss to Princeton. But Rutgers, ranked No. 15, did not cooperate.

"They are strong in every way a team can be; they have no weaknesses," Harvard Coach Tom Wilson said.

The Crimson was a little slow to start the first match, allowing the Scarlett Raiders to soar ahead, beyond the reach of any sort of comeback.

"It is tough to head into a game you know you are going to lose," said senior middle blocker Evan Mager.

The second match was the more exciting due to the late rally made possible by the new "two-thug" offense Wilson had his team execute. In this system, an extra passer positioned on the inside allowed Harvard to use its outside hitters more.

Harvard was down 7-1 when the new offense kicked into gear. The Crimson dramatically shut Rutgers down while catching up to tie the score, 8-8.

However, Rutgers proved too much for the Crimson. It did not allow Harvard to convert on any of its side-outs, forcing the Crimson to lose possession and the match.

"The second game was by far our best game," Mager said.

Mager played a huge part in the offense produced by Harvard, leading the team in kills from the inside.