Volleyball on course for NCAA tourney

The members of the Penn volleyball team can't help but be excited.

Excited about sitting on top of the Ivy League standings with an 8-1 record.

Excited about their six-match winning streak.

Excited about carrying that momentum into this weekend's matches against Dartmouth and Harvard at the Palestra.

But the Quakers aren't excited -- at least not yet -- about their chances of making some noise in this year's 2001 NCAA Tournament.

"We have to take it one step at a time," Penn freshman Natalie Francis said. "We still have to win the rest of our games this season. And then if we make it, that would be great."

The road to Penn's first Ivy title since 1990 and first-ever berth to "December Madness" goes through five teams -- Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Yale.

"If we drop a match, it could be a three-way or two-way tie for first place," Penn coach Kerry Major said. "It's just not a position we want to be in, so we keep telling ourselves that we control our own destiny."

But Penn has already beaten each of these teams this season, and another 5-0 stint against them will guarantee the Quakers the 2001 Ivy crown.

And the players are pretty optimistic about their chances.

"This is the best chance we've had since I've been here to make the tournament," Penn senior Jodie Antypas said. "Our team is better and stronger than we have been the last three years."

If the Quakers do earn the right to play in the postseason, they will likely be seeded toward the bottom in the 64-team single-elimination tournament.

This means Penn will travel to the campus of its opponent.

And several of the Quakers are hoping that will mean a trip to California, the home state of many of the team's players.

"If we go out there, all our parents are going to come," said Penn sophomore Katie Brandt, an Irvine, Calif., native. "It's a huge incentive to win and just have that opportunity to go out there and play."

But the Red and Blue probably will not be flying out far from Philadelphia.

"I just got a memo that says this year they're trying to prevent teams from going through air travel," Major said. "Rather, they're trying to [have teams] stay within 400 miles of their school as best they can, and still do the seeding properly."

If that holds true, this year's Ancient Eight representative to the tournament will likely face a team such as No. 13 Penn State.

And that will slightly increase the opportunity for an upset, as the majority of the top teams in the nation are in the West or the Midwest.

Whichever Ivy team makes the tournament will need all the luck it can get. Ancient Eight teams are 0-7 in matches at NCAAs, and no team in the league has even taken a game in the tournament.

The most recent team to try was Princeton, the 2000 Ivy League champion.

In the first round, the Tigers faced a 28-0 Nebraska team that was then the No. 1 team in the nation. Princeton was promptly disposed of by the Cornhuskers, who went on to win the national championship.

And while Major doesn't want to make any predictions or assessments before the opponent is determined, she isn't counting her team out.

"I feel confident that we will have a chance if we do everything perfectly and they underestimate us from our game tape or whatever else they learned about us," Major said. "It'd certainly be nice to be the first Ivy team that takes a game. Then if we take a game, we'll look at taking the match."

Of course, Penn still has to win five more Ivy games to even think about the NCAA Tournament.

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