“We were working on defense a lot this week,” Baise said. “We had been blocking really well. In the beginning of the season that was really our strength, but we were struggling offensively. Our offense has gotten a little bit better, but our defense struggled tonight.”

In the fourth set, Harvard found a surge in its drive following its gain of an early 2-0 advantage.

Though the Crimson held onto the lead for most of the set, the Violets came very close to taking it at several different points and were never far behind, tying the score eight times.

But once again Harvard faced difficulty in holding onto its momentum, and after the final tie of the set at 19-19, the Crimson was able to take only one of the final seven points. NYU ultimately won the set, 25-20.

“We didn’t make some of the miscellaneous plays on defense that you need to beat a team that’s just as good as you are,” Lothman said. “So that allowed them to take the extra game.”

Though Harvard was able to make slight gains in its offense, with Jones and Rehkemper each tallying double-digit kills, the team still sees room for improvement in all facets of its game.

“We really just have to cut down on our errors,” Rehkemper said. “We made a lot of hitting errors, and I think our hitting percentage was pretty low for the match as a whole. We missed a lot of serves early on which we need to start nailing, because that’s just free points that you’re giving away, but other than that I think we played some good defense. There were some upsides to it, though; they just came out really hard, and we just weren’t able to match it.”