Following three tight sets, Yale jumped out to an early lead in the fourth set, riding sophomore libero Kate Swanson’s serve until Harvard was forced to take a timeout. The Bulldogs’ lead climbed to as high as six points before the Crimson started shaving the deficit; the lead shrunk to five, four, three, then two points as the score crept closer to 25. Eventually, Harvard tied the game and even took the lead at 23-22.
After a block and a few kills, the Crimson found itself on the cusp of sending the match to a winner-take-all set. But suddenly the tides turned, and a side-out by Yale tied the game, at which point the Bulldogs rattled off two more points and seized victory.
“That was one of the first experiences that the team has had in a super tight game with such an emotionally established rival,” Bain acknowledged. “When we are up 27-26, we need to finish….We were making a lot of unforced errors.”
For the Crimson squad, Saturday’s match at Yale saw some of the same patterns from the Brown face-off the night before: the freshman and senior setting tandem of McCarthy and Bain put up impressive numbers in the back row once again, ending with a combined 47 assists and 20 digs. Burbank led with a match-high 16 kills and finished with 30 on the weekend, the most among her teammates. Meyer also pitched in with eight kills and a .467 hitting percentage.
For the Bulldogs, three players recorded double-digit kill totals—each with 11—and of particular note among them was freshman outside hitter Tristin Kott, who managed to do so without recording a single hitting error. Kott converted .688 of the sets she received into kills.
Whereas Harvard ran its offense with two setters, Yale relied solely on freshman Franny Arnautou to dish its sets. Arnautou finished with 43 assists on the night, topping her average assists per set output by three.
Harvard’s 35 hitting errors for the match—compared to Yale’s 15—depict the most telling statistic from the Crimson’s defeat at the hands of the Bulldogs. These giveaway points manifested themselves most clearly in the discrepancy between hitting percentages, where Yale outmatched Harvard .268 to .131.
Even while the sets ended in relatively close fashion, the Bulldogs’ front row played a markedly more efficient match than the Crimson’s, recording at least twice as many kills as errors in each set. The Crimson managed this feat only once, in the second game, which it won.
“[Minimizing unforced errors] is an easy way to avoid losing those super important points,” Bain said, “so I think we know what we need to focus on when we get into tight situations like that”
Due in large part to these errors at the net, Saturday marks only the second time all season that Harvard has conceded a match while recording more kills than its opponent.
Yale improved its untarnished home record to 5-0 with the closely contested win over Harvard on Saturday night.