Box Score
NEWARK, NJ—NJIT rallied for a 3-2 women's volleyball win over visiting Lafayette after facing elimination at critical junctures in each of the final two sets Friday night in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
The come-from-behind victory (17-25, 25-22, 20-25, 25-23, 16-14) was NJIT's third consecutive win, upping its season won-lost to 5-10. Lafayette, which began the year 8-2, lost its fifth straight, falling to 8-7.
Trailing after three sets, 1-2, NJIT was in trouble late in the fourth frame, falling behind, 20-22. If Lafayette's lead had held, the Leopards would have gone home with a 3-1 match win. But NJIT closed the set 5-1 to stay alive, 25-23.
The visitors went up, 4-0, to open the deciding set and led 8-5 when the teams switched sides under deciding-set rules. NJIT scored the first four points out of the break, taking a 9-8 lead and eventually went ahead, 12-9, as the teams inched their way to a decision. The Leopards came back to tie the score at 12, 13 and 14 before the Highlanders prevailed, 16-14, on two Lafayette attack errors.
Not surprisingly, the hitting statistics were very close, with each team piling up a lot of kills and a lot of attack errors. Lafayette had 53 kills and 32 attack errors and NJIT had 51 kills and 30 errors.
Each team had two players with double-figure kills totals.
Danica Vukotic hit a match-best 18 kills and
Valerie Carroll added 10 for the victorious Highlanders, while Brianne Giangiobbe and Karissa Ciliento each notched 11 kills for the Leopards.
Lafayette, with a 49-47 advantage in assists, was paced by setter Molly Belcher's 34 assists, while
Fran Edmondson of NJIT topped all players with 41 assists.
Lafayette had a 6-3 lead in service aces, but each team gave up far more points on service errors than it scored on aces. The Leopards had 13 serving errors to go with their 6 aces and NJIT paired 11 service errors with its three aces. Belcher and Lauren Pisaro each had two aces for the Lafayette, while the three Highlander aces came from three different people.
On defense, NJIT had an 11-8 lead in total team blocks, as Edmondson had 6 block assists, while
Julia Colombo and Carroll each contributed 4 block assists.
Cathy Leung had 2 block solos and a block assist. Danielle Towslee was the Lafayette blocking leader with 6 block assists.
On the floor, NJIT libero
Katie Goswick collected a match-high 27 digs, followed by Leung (18 digs),
Nina Vukotic (15),
Danica Vukotic (13), and Edmondson (11). Pisauro, the Lafayette libero, finished with 26 digs and three other Leopards finished with double-figures in that department.
Lafayette, which actually outscored NJIT in points over the course of the match, 109-103, took the first set handily, 25-17, notching 13 kills with just 1 error in 33 swings (.364), compared to an .036 hitting percentage (8 kills, 7 errors, 28 attempts) for the home team.
The Highlanders took two 5-point leads near the middle of the second set, the last at 16-11, but did not pull away, despite leading from 2-1 all the way to 25-22. The visitors pulled to within a point at 22-21, but back-to-back Leopard attack errors put NJIT at set point, which finally came on
Nina Vukotic's kill.
Lafayette went up two sets to one with a 25-20 win in the third, as the Leopards never trailed after 4-3 in the set.
The fourth set that kept NJIT alive included 18 ties and eight lead changes, with Colombo's kill breaking a 23-23 tie and a Lafayette attack error clinching set point for the Highlanders.
Carroll led the way for the Highlanders in the deciding fifth set, as she generated four kills in five swings without an error. Her fourth kill of the set gave the home team a 14-13 lead, to put NJIT on the verge of match point.
The Highlanders will go on the road for their next three matches, although none of the trips are long ones. The first match in the trip will be at Saint Peter's in Jersey City on October 9 at 7 pm. The Highlanders scored a 3-0 win in three close sets when the teams played in Newark on September 4.
