Box Score


NEWARK, NJ—The NJIT men's volleyball team finally played a home match in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association and the Highlanders finally got an EIVA win Thursday night in the Fleisher Athletic Center. But it was the opposite easy, as the neighborhood rivalry vs. Rutgers University-Newark went the five-set distance with NJIT finally prevailing by the thinnest of margins, 15-13.
 
The victory (21-25, 25-14, 25-13, 23-25, 15-13) for the Highlanders upped their overall record to 6-7, (1-6 in the EIVA). Rutgers-Newark falls to 0-6 in the EIVA and 4-8 overall.
 
NJIT, which had a solid .365 attack percentage (69 kills, 19 errors, 137 attempts) on the night, received a match-best 19 kills from freshman Jabarry Goodridge, including a high-flying spike to the floor in the middle of the Scarlet Raiders defense for match point.
 
Goodridge had 4 attack errors in 36 swings, producing a .417 attack percentage. Right behind Goodridge in the attack was junior middle Ryan Thomas, with 17 kills and just one error in 26 attempts for a .615 attack percentage. Thomas also produced the 14th NJIT point of the deciding set with his only service ace of the night.
 
Sophomore Raphael Anthony had 9 kills and two errors in 17 attempts (.412) as another effective hitter for the Highlanders, while TJ Jurko and Brad Thele added 7 kills each to the winning cause.
 
Junior setter Zak Robben's 58 assists were the most by a Highlander in more than four years, going back to when Matthew Lui notched 69 assists vs. Sacred Heart on February 19, 2010.
 
NJIT registered 8 total service aces, with two apiece for Goodridge, Chris Kaepernick, and Thele.
 
On defense, freshman libero Daniel Leung posted a match-best 15 digs on the floor. Thomas led the NJIT defense at the net, where the visitors held a slight team blocking advantage of 11.5-to-10.
 
Rutgers-Newark sophomore Cody Chidsey posted a match-best 6 blocks (5 solo, 1 assisted), while senior Brett Pickens added 5 block assists and sophomore Collin Ferguson chipped in four more block assists for the Scarlet Raiders.
 
Sophomore Travis Mintzer led R-N in kills with 16, while freshman Jack Fredricks, a high school teammate of NJIT's Leung, contributed 13 kills. Pickens the only senior on a young Scarlet Raider squad (as a point of fact, NJIT, too, has only one senior), finished with 11 kills and he also served two aces, joined by three teammates with one each.
 
Sophomore setter Kevin McCandless paced Rutgers-Newark with 44 assists.
 
Fredricks led the Scarlet Raiders in digs with 9, followed closely by Mintzer (8).
 
Coached by Pedro Trevino, who was a setter on some of the best NJIT teams ever and was named NJIT Male Athlete of the Year following his senior season in 2000, Rutgers-Newark men's volleyball is in transition.
 
The only NCAA Division III athletics program with Division I men's volleyball, Rutgers-Newark is in the process of reclassifying the sport to Division III, which had its first NCAA-sponsored men's volleyball national championship tournament in 2012. In 2015, Rutgers-Newark will be eligible to compete in the NCAA Division III championship.
 
With a young squad (one senior, one junior who did not play on Wednesday, and the rest freshmen and sophomores), Rutgers-Newark quickly served notice on the Highlanders that the first of their two 2014 contests (the rematch is April 2 down the hill on Warren Street) would not be a walkover.
 
The Scarlet Raiders, who last won on February 18 at Mt. St. Vincent in the Bronx, took the upper hand against NJIT with a 25-21 victory in an opening set that saw 9 ties and two lead changes. The last tie was 21 apiece, with the visitors storming to victory by taking the final four points of the set, two points coming on block solos by Chidsey.
 
NJIT responded by dominating the next two sets, 25-15 and 25-13, respectively. In Set Two, NJIT hit an unbeatable .562, with 19 kills and just one error on 32 swings, with a balanced attack showing Goodridge with 5 kills and three others with 3 kills each. For its part, Rutgers-Newark hit a strong .320  as a team, but it wasn't good enough to hang with the Highlanders, who closed the set 11-4 run after the visitors had gotten to within three, 14-11.
 
After the one attacking error in the second set, the Highlanders made two in the third set, but won easily by combining an attack that had 12 kills and the two errors in 23 attempts with five total team blocks. Those blocks accounted for five of Rutgers-Newark's seven attack errors in the frame, as the Scarlet Raiders' team attack percent was zero (7 kills, 7 errors, 29 attempts). Thomas stood out for NJIT in the set, notching 6 kills in just 7 attempts and getting a block solo and a block assist on defense.
 
NJIT, which never trailed in the third set and built a 22-9 advantage before settling for the 25-13 win, was haunted again by difficulty closing out its close EIVA matches this season.
 
Up 2-1 in sets on Rutgers-Newark, the Highlanders, who jumped to a 6-1 lead in the fourth set, eventually fell behind at 8-9. They gained ties at 9-9 and 10-10, but Rutgers-Newark ran off four straight points for a 14-10 lead.
 
NJIT recovered enough to get ties at 18-18 and 22-22, but Pickens had a kill to put the Scarlet Raiders ahead 23-22 and then an attack error for NJIT made it 24-22 for the visitors. Thomas had a kill to delay NJIT's defeat in the set, but Jose Mendez notched a kill for the 25-23 win in the set, leveling matters at two sets apiece for the Scarlet Raiders.
 
For the Highlanders, the fourth-set loss meant third third five-set match in seven EIVA contests so far. The previous two turned out badly. In the EIVA opener at Sacred Heart on February 8, the Highlanders, who lost the first two frames, rallied back to force a fifth set, but were lost in the deciding set. Then at Saint Francis (PA) exactly a week later, NJIT won the first two sets, only to see Saint Francis recover to salvage a win by taking the last three sets.
 
Rutgers-Newark, for its part, hadn't played more than four sets in going 0-5 previously in the EIVA and 4-2 outside the league.
 
NJIT went ahead 8-5 in the tense deciding set on a combined block by Dhruv Lad, NJIT's only senior, and freshman Raymond Kowalski for what was the biggest lead of the frame for either side.
 
Rutgers-Newark came back to forge ties at 11-11 and 12-12, before Thomas put the Highlanders on top with a kill and followed that with an ace. A Thomas service error made it 14-13, but Goodridge made no mistakes on a second try at match point, finding the hole in the Rutgers-Newark defense after rising high any block attempt and sending a hard kill to the floor.
 
NJIT has a week to prepare for the 7-match second half of its EIVA schedule, which opens next Thursday, March 13, with a 7 pm home contest with Sacred Heart in the Fleisher Athletic Center.