M. Volleyball Places Second at Roger Williams Tourney

Home cooking was the difference for the Harvard men's volleyball team.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, the team was playing in the Roger Williams Tournament over the weekend in Rhode Island and not in Cambridge. Host Roger Williams took advantage of its home court to defeat Harvard, 3-0, in the finals.

The Crimson's loss to Roger Williams came after consecutive victories against Concordia (3-1), Dartmouth (3-0), Eastern Mennonite (3-0) and SUNY-New Paltz (3-0) in the round-robin tournament.

"We thought we were evenly matched with Roger Williams," junior middle-hitter Ryan Westendorf said. "A combination of factors cost us the match though."

Among those factors was an injury to senior starting middle-hitter Ned Staebler, who was forced to the sidelines after an injury in the game against SUNY-New Paltz.

The Crimson (6-3 overall) jumped out to an early 10-2 lead in the first game against Roger Williams. A ferocious Roger Williams comeback, however, left Harvard in its wake, and the Crimson never recovered.

"Losing the lead like that really deflated our sails," Westendorf said.

"We should have won," assistant captain Dominic Allocco said. "But it was definitely an improvement over our last tournament."

The Crimson's performance over the weekend was highlighted by the play of junior setter Pete Buletza, who--along with freshman outsidehitter David Olson--was named to the all-tournament team.

"Pete really came through in the crunch," Allocco said.

"We all had moments when we played well," Westendorf said. "But Pete was good consistently."

"[Buletza] really shined," he added.

The Crimson's victory against SUNY-New Paltz brought with it the satisfying taste of revenge, since the New Paltz team had knocked the Crimson out of last weekend's Vassar tournament.

"Beating New Paltz pretty convincingly showed that we had improved since last weekend," Allocco said.

"We have a really young team, but the new guys are starting to gel now," Allocco said. "It's taking a while for us to come together as a team, but the process is going on."

The Crimson will play host to Dartmouth tomorrow at Malkin Athletic Center--a match-up that the Crimson hopes to use as a tune-up for its upcoming weekend games at New York University and Long Island University-South Hampton on Saturday and Sunday.

"That's going to be a really big weekend for us," Allocco said. "[NYU and LIU-South Hampton] are both really good teams on the East Coast. It'll be a chance to see how good we are."