Box Score

NEWARK, NJ—NJIT, paced by TJ Jurko and Kajetan Borecki, who shared match honors with 17 kills each, took a 3-1 men's volleyball victory against visiting Limestone Friday afternoon in the 2014 season opener for both teams in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
With Jurko and Borecki leading the way, the Highlanders hit .302 as a team and they also made a strong showing in the service game with 12 aces, topped by 6 from Jurko, to go with solid defense on the floor (43 digs to 30 for Limestone, the visitors from Gaffney, South Carolina). The 43 digs for the Highlanders played a big role Limestone's hitting percentage (.200) being less than two-thirds that of NJIT's.
 
Jurko accounted for a match-best 23.5 points, followed by 20.5 for Borecki, and 12.0 for junior middle Ryan Thomas.
 
Jurko, who missed the entire 2013 season due to injury after earning second-team All-Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association honors as a freshman in 2012, made his presence felt in a big way in his return to competition.
 
In addition to the 17 kills and an attack percentage of .414 (17 kills, 5 errors. 29 attempts) and the 6 aces, Jurko was active on defense with 7 digs, two behind junior libero Oren Zyndorf's match-best 9 digs.
 
Putting Jurko's opening-day performance in perspective, NJIT had just one individual with more than 17 kills in a match through the entire 2013 season and Jurko did it in his first match back after a season-long layoff, plus other nagging injuries leading up the 2014 season opener.
 
And no one on the 2013 Highlanders had more than 3 aces in a match, a total that Jurko doubled against Limestone.
 
Borecki, a native of Poland who debuted for the Highlanders in 2013 after playing a season at Graceland University in Iowa, had the 17 kills plus 8 digs against Limestone. He had a team season-best 20 kills last year vs. Harvard, but Friday's 17 kills tied his second-best output from 2013. The 8 digs were his third-best NJIT career match total, topped only by 10 vs. Stevens and 9 vs. Pfeiffer, both in the 2013 season.
 
Thomas appears to have made significant strides in his all-around game, serving 3 aces vs. Limestone, a number that equaled his total for the entire 2013 season, when appeared in 38 sets over 17 matches (the team played 28 matches and 107 sets). Thomas who is 6-foot-5 with exceptional leaping ability, led the Highlanders in blocking on Friday with 4 block assists. His 7 kills vs. the Saints equaled his highest match total from 2013 and fell three shy of his personal-best 10 kills, done vs. Rutgers-Newark late in 2012, his freshman year.
 
Chris Kaepernick, who led last year's Highlanders in kills, played the last two sets on Friday and chipped in 8 kills and a .357 hitting percentage.
 
Zak Robben, who shared the setting duties last year with Matthew Lui (Class of 2013) went the distance in the 2014 opener, collecting 51 assists, four shy of his overall career-high 55, done in a 5-set match last April at Harvard and 15 more than his previous career high for a 4-set match. Further, Robben's 51 assists on Friday were the most for an NJIT setter in a 4-set match since Lui had 53 against Harvard in the 2010 season.
 
With Zyndorf's 9 digs leading the pack, Borecki added 8 and Jurko and Robben each had 7. Following Thomas' 4 block assists, the Highlanders got 3 block assists each from Borecki and Raphael Anthony.
 
Limestone got 13 kills from junior Eric Zaun, whose family is from Cherry Hill, NJ, and 11 kills from Jon Schaefer. Freshman Nick Wildes who handled most of the setting in the final two sets, had 14 assists and Luca Wanek, also a freshman, started and played two sets, adding 12 assists for the Saints. Schaefer provided a team-leading 3 of Limestone's 7 service aces.
 
On defense, Schaefer and Zaun tied for team honors with 6 digs each and Curtis Van Grisven had a match-best 5 block assists, followed by 4 each from Schaefer and Joel Mulbach, as Limestone claimed a 10-7 lead in team blocks. Zaun, who had a pair of block assists, notched the only block solo for either side.
 
Limestone, which beat NJIT 3-1 last March in South Carolina, took a quick 6-2 jump in Friday's opening set, but the Highlanders surged ahead with a 9-2 spurt that flipped a 10-8 Limestone lead into a 17-12 advantage for the home team.
 
NJIT held a 23-17 lead before the Saints scored four in a row ahead of their own service error and an attack error that pushed the Highlanders to the last two clinching points, 25-21.
 
The Highlanders took the second set easily, prevailing 25-14 with Borecki's 5 kills in 6 attempts showing the way along with 6 service aces—3 for Thomas and 2 for Borecki.
 
NJIT, which used the same seven men (six starters, plus the libero, Zyndorf) in taking the first two sets, ran into a rough patch in the middle of the third set when a defensive collision took Thomas and Borecki off the floor at the same time.
 
Leading 9-8, the Highlanders had a hiccup regaining the cohesion they had shown before the substitutions and Limestone went on a run that put it ahead 19-13 after a kill for Mulbach.
 
Down at least three points from 11-14 to 18-21, the Highlanders used a 10-3 skein to tie the set at 22-22 on a Kaepernick kill. There were subsequent deadlocks at 23-23 and 24-24. In fact, NJIT was at 24-23, looking at match point when it made three straight errors, one serving and two attacking, allowing the Saints to stay alive for another set.
 
After conceding the first point of the fourth set, NJIT regrouped for leads of 10-6 and 12-7. But the Saints fought back and led 16-14 before the Highlanders ran off four points in a row. The home team never trailed after 17-16, but Limestone got within a point as late as a Schaefer kill that made it 23-22 for the Highlanders, who closed out the set and match with kills by Thomas and Kaepernick.
 
NJIT is off for more than a week before it hosts another non-conference match, this one against Lindenwood, an NCAA Division II program from St. Charles, MO, that plays in the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, one of three men's volleyball conferences whose champion earns an automatic berth in the NCAA Division I-II national championship field of four teams.

NJIT's league, the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, has an automatic berth for its champion, as does the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. A fourth team, chosen at large, but usually from the MPSF, the strongest of the three AQ conferences, rounds out the field.  Lindenwood was 19-12 overall in 2013, including 5-9 in the powerful MIVA.
 
The NJIT vs. Lindenwood match will be played on Saturday, January 18, at 6 pm in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.