Women's Volleyball vs. No. 20 MIT
NEWMAC Tournament Semifinal
Saturday, November 11 | 3:30 p.m.
Blake Arena | Springfield, Mass. 

SERIES HISTORY
•    Babson is 9-38 all-time against MIT in a series that dates back to 1982. 
•    The Beavers have won four of their last six matches against the Engineers going back to the 2018 NEWMAC Tournament. 
•    Eight of the last nine matches between the teams have been decided in four or five sets. 
•    Saturday's contest will be the first played between Babson and MIT on a neutral court.

POSTSEASON HISTORY
•    Saturday's match marks the sixth time Beavers and Engineers will meet in the conference playoffs since 2014 and the 10th time overall. 
•    Babson is 3-6 in the nine previous matches with victories in the 2014 final and 2015 and 2018 semifinals. 
•    MIT defeated the Green and White in four sets (25-19, 19-25, 25-22, 25-23) in last year's NEWMAC final. 

LAST MEETING
•    Junior Lauren Gips led three players in double figures with 14 kills and nine blocks and sophomore Roz Cabuena finished with a career-high 37 digs to help the Beavers defeat then-18th-ranked MIT in four sets, 25-12, 19-25, 25-17, 27-25, on November 1 in Babson Park. 
•    Senior Lulu McShane hit .458 and totaled 13 kills and four blocks, classmate Erin Gray added 12 kills and five blocks and first-year Zoe Ackerman dished out 38 assists for the Beavers, who recorded a season-high 13 total blocks. 
•    Claire Underwood registered a team-high 14 kills, Ali Gibbs contributed six blocks and Emily Cheng handed out 38 assists to go along with 18 digs to lead the Engineers, who hit a season-low .070 in the loss. 

SCOUTING THE BEAVERS
•    Second-seeded Babson (24-5) has won four of its last five matches after dispatching seventh-seeded Wheaton in three sets, 25-16, 25-14, 25-15, in a NEWMAC Tournament quarterfinal on Tuesday night. 
•    Gray (9), Gips (8) and sophomore Isabella Allen (8) combined for 25 kils, Ackerman doled out 23 assists and Cabuena chipped in with 15 digs for the Beavers, who hit .329 as a team in the victory. 
•    Gray (3.06 k/s) ranks seventh in the conference in kills, Gips is averaging 2.56 kills per set and ranks first in the league in blocks per set (1.23) and second in hitting percentage (.371), and McShane is hitting .268 and contributing 2.21 kills per set. 
•    Ackerman is dishing out 7.25 assists per set, Cabuena ranks second in the NEWMAC in digs per set (5.20) and junior Tatum Stelter is tied for fourth in the league with 56 service aces and is averaging 2.56 digs per set.

SCOUTING THE ENGINEERS
•    Third-seeded and 20th-ranked MIT (27-4) eased past sixth-seeded Emerson 3-0 in Tuesday's night's quarterfinal round. 
•    Consecreta Rozario and Lauren Keller both had nine kills, Ella Gragg added eight kills and Cheng produced 29 assists and eight digs for the Engineers, who matched their season high with 17 service aces. 
•    Keller (2.95 k/s) ranks fifth in the conference with a .328 hitting percentage, Rozario (2.41 k/s, 0.61 b/s) is first in the NEWMAC and sixth in Division III with a .405 hitting percentage and Gragg is averaging 2.36 kills and 2.04 digs per set. 
•    Cheng is handing out a league-best 9.98 assists per set and is third on the team with 39 service aces, while Olivia Personeni is averaging 4.13 digs per set.

BEAVERS IN THE POSTSEASON
•    Babson is in the NEWMAC semifinals for the ninth consecutive season and has gone 5-3 over the last eight years advancing to the conference tournament final in 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022.
•    The Beavers have won four of the last eight NEWMAC titles (2014, 2015, 2018, 2019) and reached the tournament final for the first time since 2019 last season.
•    Prior to claiming the first tournament championship in program history in 2014, the Green and White had not won a conference tournament match since the 1993 NEW 8 quarterfinals.

CABUENA EARNS CONFERENCE RECOGNITION
•    Following two of the best performances of her career, Cabuena was selected as the NEWMAC Defensive Player of the Week on Monday. 
•    She had a career-high 37 digs in last Wednesday's four-set win over No. 18 MIT and followed it up with 30 digs in the loss at Springfield on Saturday. 
•    For the week, she averaged 7.44 digs per set. 

TOURNAMENT EXPERIENCE
•    In five postseason matches last fall, Gips averaged 3.00 kills and 1.13 blocks per set while hitting at a .300 clip. 
•    McShane (2.42 k/s) was second on the team with 46 kills and hit .256,  while Allen averaged 1.76 kills per set. 
•    The quartet of Cabuena (3.63), senior Olivia Leinenweber (2.68), sophomore Sophia Shaw (2.44) and Stelter (1.83) combined to average more than 10 digs per set. ent match since the 1993 NEW 8 quarterfinals.

MOVING UP THE CHARTS
•    Gray ranks 14th in single-season program history with her 285 kills and needs just four more to move into 13th position. 
•    Ackerman's 740 assists rank 12th on the Beavers' single-season list, while Gips has set a new career high with 75 total blocks, tying her for 13th on the program's single-season chart. 
•    Stelter's 151 service aces rank seventh all-time in Babson history and she needs three to pass Angela Price '16 for sixth place.

NUMBERS TO KNOW
•    The Beavers are 21-2 this season when winning the opening set.
•    Babson is 6-1 in neutral court matches. 
•    The Green and White is 19-0 when its opponents have a hitting percentage of .150 or lower. 
•    The Beavers have finished with 13 total blocks in each of their last two matches against MIT and are 20-2 on the year when totaling more blocks then their foes. 
•    Babson is 20-1 on the year when serving up more aces than its opponents. 

UP NEXT 
•    The winner of Saturday's semifinal will face either top-seeded Springfield or fourth-seeded Coast Guard in the NEWMAC final on Sunday at 1 p.m. 

TICKETS
•    All tickets must be purchased online through the NEWMAC Box Office for all rounds of this year's conference tournament. 
•    Students attending NEWMAC institutions with a valid ID and children under 12 are free and do not need a mobile ticket.