Box score
NEWARK, NJ—Visiting Army scored a competitive 3-0 women's volleyball win over NJIT Wednesday night in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center, halting an eight-match winning streak for the Highlanders.
NJIT, which hadn't lost since September 19 when it fell to Columbia, 2-3, to start the Red Flash Invitational at Saint Francis (PA), is 11-8 on the season.
Army, now 16-2, with one of the losses coming against Southern California, ranked fifth in the nation at the time, topped the Highlanders 25-20, 25-20, 25-23.
Three Army players—Fabiola Castro, Briana Stremick and Jamie Clark—posted double-figure kills totals paced by Castro's 16. Starting setter Maureen Bannon had 29 assists in two sets and Malissa Galini collected 15 assists setting in the third set.
Castro made just two errors and finished with a .424 hitting percentage, while Clark was even more efficient, finishing with a .611 attack percentage and committing just two errors herself.
Clark, a 5-foot-10 senior, had two service aces to lead the Black Knights in a category that was tied between the teams, 4-4.
On defense, Shara Hoffman came up with a match-best 17 digs and Clark led Army's domination at the net with seven block assists. The team blocking advantage for the taller Black Knights was 8.5-to-1.
Senior Agnieszka Pregowska continued her strong play for NJIT, leading the Highlanders with 10 kills. She had just two errors in 24 attempts for a team-best .333 attack percentage.
Erica Schultz picked up 17 assists and Danielle Thompson added eight for the Highlanders and freshman Audrey Snell was the aces leader, with two.
Brazilians Sabrina Baby and Renata Pandolfo combined for 30 digs—16 for Baby and 14 for Pandolfo—while Schultz and Kristy Haeckel combined for NJIT's only block.
Army finished off each of the first two sets with a surge. Leading the first set, 20-19, the Black Knights closed out, 5-1, for the win and they finished 6-2 to pull away after 19-18 in the second set.
The visitors took an 11-5 lead early in the third set, but NJIT closed back to 9-11, before another Army spurt put the Black Knights on top, 19-12.
But NJIT, which still trailed, 18-23, fought back and cut the deficit to 23-24, but Castro notched a kill on match point for Army.
NJIT faces another big test when it travels to Washington, DC, for a match at perennial power American in a match slated for a noon start on Saturday.
American is a somewhat misleading 10-6 through matches of October 4, having faced a national-level schedule to date. However, the Eagles are 4-0 in defense of their 2007 Patriot League championship.
Before hosting the Highlanders, they will play a Patriot League match Friday night against Navy and the Eagles have won five straight 3-0 victories heading into that contest.
The Eagles were 26-8 overall in 2007 and return five starters from a team that went 13-1 in the Patriot League regular season before winning the conference tournament and a berth in the NCAA Division I Tournament. Their coach, Barry Goldberg, entered this year with 474 wins in 19 seasons at AU.
Last October 31, also at American, NJIT lost to the powerful Eagles, 16-30, 26-30, 20-30.
