HARVARD 3, CORNELL 1

Arriving in Ithaca, the Crimson was hungry for a win. Each of the previous two weekends featured 3-0 shutouts at the hands of Ivy foe Dartmouth that came as a disheartening start to the Ivy season.

The emotion from the previous losses translated to a dominant performance against Cornell in which Harvard proved too much for the Big Red (5-10, 2-2) to handle.

“We played with a lot of passion,” Ono Horn said.

The Crimson put up nine blocks to Cornell’s two, although the lockdown on defense was not fully invoked until the second frame.

Harvard came out onto the court of Newman Arena with all cylinders firing and quickly established a 4-0 lead. The Big Red recomposed itself and assembled an 8-2 run to get back in the game. With the momentum in its favor, Cornell cruised on to a 25-21 set win, refusing to yield the lead once.

“We blocked them a lot and kept them out of their system with our aggressive serving and defense,” Ono Horn said. “As long as we’ve got that, were going to win a lot.”

Something must have clicked during the several minutes in between the first set and the second, as the Crimson took to the court again and shut down the Big Red attack. Over the course of the next three frames, Harvard held Cornell to attack clips of .188, .147 and .000, respectively, to claim each set en route to its first Ivy League victory.

—Staff writer Emmett Kistler can be reached at ekistler@fas.harvard.edu.