Box score

NEWARK, NJ—Four different Grand Canyon attackers reach double-figure kills totals, as the visiting Antelopes scored a 3-1 win over NJIT in front of an Education Day crowd of nearly 700 area students from Grades 6 through 8 Friday afternoon in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
The match against the visiting Antelopes, who are based in Phoenix, AZ, was the season opener for NJIT, as well as the home opener for the Highlanders (0-1). Grand Canyon, which competes in the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, got into the win column for the first time in 2013 after road losses at two powerful programs—Stanford, ranked third in the nation, and George Mason, ranked 14th when it hosted Grand Canyon.
 
Grand Canyon a 25-21, 25-22, 23-25, 25-21 winner on Friday afternoon, featured a balanced attacked, paced by 19 kills from sophomore Nick Mather, followed by 15 kills apiece from junior Ben Ponnet and senior Jordon Tarantino. Sophomore Keaton Berry added 10 kills for the winners.
 
Junior setter Keith Smith generated a match-best 51 assists for the 'Lopes, while three different players accounted for GCU's three service aces.
 
On defense, libero Trent Bruns led the way for the visitors, collecting 16 digs, while Ponnet finished with 12 and Ben Hunt followed with. The top blockers were Berry (6 block assists) and Ponnet (5 block assists).
 
For the Highlanders, newcomer Kajetan Borecki, a native of Poland who played his freshman season at Graceland University in Iowa, notched a team-best 12 kills, while also picking up four blocks (1 solo, 3 assisted).
 
Sophomore Chris Kaepernick and senior Doug Battersby followed with 10 kills apiece. Battersby, with just two errors in 17 swings, posted an impressive .471 hitting percentage. Senior Matthew Lui passed for 35 assists, while Battersby led the NJIT servers, accounting for two of the team's five aces.
 
Brady Smith, one of six seniors listed on the NJIT roster, had 21 digs from his libero role for the Highlanders, while Herman Kantushov, a junior, picked up 10 digs. NJIT, with a 10-to-7.5 team blocking advantage, got six individual blocks from Battersby (1 solo, 5 assisted) and four from Borecki.
 
NJIT started each of the first two sets with leads, but could not sustain the advantage in either case.
 
The Highlanders opened the match at 6-2, but faded quickly, allowing an 11-5 run that flipped the lead to GCU, 13-10. NJIT went on a 4-0 run with Kaepernick serving to reclaim the lead, 15-13, but a 4-0 response by the 'Lopes regained the lead for the visitors, blemished only by an 18-18 tie after a Borecki kill for the Highlanders. The visitors then closed the set on a 7-3 spurt, as Mather finished the set with seven kills, supported by five kills from Tarantino.
 
Set Two saw a 5-2 early lead for NJIT, which would not trail until the visitors broke a 17-17 tie with points on a Mather kill and a Jared Goldberg ace. Grand Canyon held its lead the rest of the way, with the three-point bulge at the end, 25-22, matching the biggest in the set for either team.
 
NJIT staved off defeat with a 25-23 win in the third set that saw 14 ties with a big lead of three (18-15, 19-16, 20-17, and 21-18, Highlanders). Grand Canyon answered the 18-21 deficit with a 3-point run and there were three more ties, the last at 23-23, before a GCU service error and a block solo for Kantushov put the Highlanders over the top. The set-clinching block for Kantushov was the fifth in the set for NJIT, matching its output in the other three sets, all lost to the visitors.
 
The fourth and final set saw six ties up to 10-10, before a kill and then an ace by Tarantino put the Antelopes in the lead for the rest of the match. The visitors' lead was either one or two points until consecutive kills by Mather and Tarantino pushed the score to 20-16, effectively putting the set and match beyond NJIT's reach.
 
Ponnet had eight kills and one error in 10 attacks for the visitors, leading GCU to a .448 hitting percentage (18 kills, 5 errors, 29 attempts) in the set. NJIT's attack percentage was also its best of the day (.344; 14 kills, 3 errors, 32 attempts), topped by six kills each from Kaepernick and Battersby.
 
The Highlanders will host two more MIVA programs next weekend, taking on Ball State on Friday at 7 pm and then IPFW on Saturday at 7 pm, both in the Fleisher Athletic Center. Neither team is in the latest national Top 15, but both have spent plenty of time in the rankings over the years.