Penn St. begins volleyball quest

Penn State's women's volleyball team, the Big Ten champion, hosts Binghamton on Friday in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The Nittany Lions are 29-2 and seeded No. 1 in the tournament while the Bearcats (13-17) qualified by upsetting Albany, 3-0, on Nov. 25 in the America East championship final.

Penn State, which will host the first and second rounds of the tournament, takes on Binghamton at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Yale and Bowling Green play in the earlier match, at 5 p.m. The winners of each match are scheduled to play at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, with the winner of that game advancing to the regional Dec. 7-8 at Purdue.

The Lions won the NCAA championship from 2007 to 2010, and UCLA won it last year.

Women's lacrosse. Widener announced Thursday that it has hired graduate Julie Mazer as its women's lacrosse coach.

Mazer, who graduated from West Chester University in 1994 and was on its field hockey and lacrosse teams, coached at William Smith College in 1997-98, at Swarthmore in 1998-99, Roanoke College from 1999 to 2003, at Lehigh from 2003 to '10, and most recently was the girls' lacrosse coach and assistant athletic director at Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, N.J.

Softball. Philadelphia native Giannina Cipolloni will join Temple's softball staff next season as a volunteer assistant coach.

Cipolloni is a 2012 graduate of the University of Virginia, where she captained the softball team and stole 31 bases as a senior, and will be responsible for coaching the outfielders and the slap hitters, head softball coach Joe DiPietro said Thursday.

She graduated from Northeast Philadelphia's Nazareth Academy, where she was a two-time all-state selection, a four-time Catholic Academy League all-star, and helped lead her team to back-to-back league championships in 2007 and 2008.

Women's soccer. La Salle goalkeeper Gabrielle Pakhtigian (North Wales, North Penn) and midfielder Renee Washington have been named CoSIDA academic all-Americans.

Pakhtigian was named to the first team while Washington secured a spot on the third team. The two are the first women soccer players from La Salle to be so honored.

Women's basketball. In a Centennial Conference match, host Ursinus (4-1, 2-0) got double digits from two freshmen forwards - 16 points from Jessica Porada and 15 from Caroline Shimrock (Gwynedd-Mercy Academy) - in the Bears' 67-34 mauling of Bryn Mawr (1-4, 0-3). Freshman forward Hope McMahan had 10 points for the Owls.

Men's ice hockey. Penn State hosts the Arizona State Sun Devils of the American Collegiate Hockey Association this weekend for a pair of games, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Greenberg Ice Pavilion.