Box Score


NEWARK, NJ—Rutgers University-Newark made the most of its final Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association neighborhood battle against NJIT, topping the visiting Highlanders, 3-1, Wednesday night in the Golden Dome Athletic Center on Warren Street
 
The Scarlet Raiders will exit the top men's volleyball conference in the East (the EIVA) following this season, making Wednesday's match vs. continuing EIVA member NJIT the final one in the long EIVA rivalry between the programs. If the rivalry  continues, the matches will take place outside of a league structure.

Rutgers-Newark, currently the nation's only overall NCAA Division III program with Division I men's volleyball, will align that sport with the rest of its component sports, moving men's volleyball to Division III in 2014-15. The seven remaining institutions in the EIVA, including NJIT, are Division I across the board in athletics.
 
Wednesday's victory leaves Rutgers-Newark's record at 7-12 overall and 1-8 in the EIVA after earning a split of the two-match season series against the Highlanders. NJIT, which had won its home half of the series in the Fleisher Athletic Center on March 6, is 8-13 overall and 2-7 in the EIVA.
 
Two of the sets Wednesday night, the first and last, were close and the two in between weren't.
 
 Rutgers-Newark used extra points to claim the first and fourth sets, winning both by identical 27-25 scores. NJIT bounced back from the first-set loss with a decisive 25-15 win in the second set, but the Highlanders fell back into a hole in the next frame, falling 18-25.
 
Both teams posted good attack percentages, but Rutgers-Newark was better, hitting .346 on 61 kills and just 16 errors in 130 attempts. NJIT had a few more kills (63), but also a few more errors (19) and more zero attacks (attacks that are neither kills nor errors), leading to a total of 144 attempts (14 more than the Scarlet Raiders) giving the Highlanders a .306 attack percentage.
 
Travis Mintzer, whose 16 kills led R-N's attack in its loss at NJIT in March, stepped up to a match-best 21 kills in the rematch. Jose Mendez, who had just two kills in the March tilt, notched 11 kills Wednesday night and Cody Chidsey and Jack Fredricks each added 10 kills for the winners.
 
Setter Kevin McCandless passed around a match-best 52 assists for the Scarlet Raiders and Mendez had two of the team's three service aces.
 
On defense, Rutgers-Newark's Ryan Yamashita came up with a team-best 12 digs and Brett Pickens and Mintzer shared the individual blocking lead for the Scarlet Raiders with four each. Pickens had a block solo and three block assists, while Mintzer's four blocks were all assisted.
 
NJIT, too, had four players with double-figure kills. Brad Thele led the way with 13 kills, followed closely by 12 apiece from Chris Kaepernick and TJ Jurko, and 11 from Ryan Thomas. The 13 kills were a career-high for the sophomore Thele, whose previous high was nine in a 2013 match.
 
Zak Robben, the Highlanders setter, had 46 assists and his two aces were the only ones of the night for his team.
 
 Of note, Jabarry Goodridge, who had a match-best 19 kills when NJIT beat Rutgers-Newark earlier, remains out of action due to a broken finger on his right (hitting) hand. He has missed the last six matches and the Highlanders are 1-5 without him.
 
Thomas, who had 17 kills with just one error hitting from the middle in the first meeting with Rutgers-Newark, was effective again, notching 11 kills and just three errors.
 
Thomas was not alone in his efficiency. Kaepernick had 12 kills without an error; Robben, the setter, had four kills and no errors; and Thele's hitting percentage was over .400 (.409) on 12 kills and 4 errors in 22 swings.
 
NJIT's Oren Zyndorf, led the match in floor defense with 20 digs, the most for a Highlander in a four-set match in over a year. For Zyndorf, the junior libero, the 20 digs matched his career-best, done previously in a 5-set match at Saint Francis on February 15. He had 19 digs in four sets the last time playing at Grand Canyon on March 29,
 
Thomas had four block solos and a block assist Wednesday, leading the visitors to a slim 9.0-to-7.0 edge in total team blocks. Dhruv Lad added four blocks (a solo and three block assists) for the Highlanders.
 
NJIT, which has struggled late in sets, especially in the EIVA, led the opening frame by four points as late as 19-15 following a Lad kil, but squandered the advantage when Rutgers-Newark took seven of the next 10 points to knot the score at 22 apiece.
 
After a timeout called by coach Ryan McNeil, the Highlanders regrouped and took the first two points after the timeout, coming within one of set point, 24-22. R-N got back with two points of its own before a Jurko kill returned the Highlanders to possible set point at 25-24. It never happened, not for NJIT, at least. Rutgers-Newark drew back even on a Chidsey kill and then won when the Highlanders committed back-to-back attack errors.
 
Having faltered down the stretch in the first set, NJIT came back for a 25-15 win in the second set. Down, 3-4, the Highlanders sandwiched two Kaepernick kills with one before and one after from Thele, followed by a kill by Jurko to claim an 8-4 advantage. The run ended on a service error by the Highlanders, but they started right back and stretched the lead to 16-7 with an 8-2 spurt. The 10-point spread at the end of the set, 25-15, was NJIT's biggest, but Rutgers-Newark was never closer than six after 13-19.
 
There was no carryover into the third set, though, as Rutgers-Newark took the first three points and was tied once (4-4). Chidsey notched a kill for a 5-4 advantage and the Scarlet Raiders led the rest of the set on the way to the 25-18 victory in the set and a 2-1 sets lead.
 
The fourth set was a battle, with 18 ties and seven lead changes. With neither team ahead by than two at any stage, Pickens hit a kill for 26-25 and then he and Mintzer combined on a block for match point.
 
The remaining six NJIT contests are all at home in the Fleisher Athletic Center, where the Highlanders are 6-1 to date.
 
First up on the home slate is a Friday 7 pm visit from Princeton. When the teams met at Princeton on March 4, the Tigers prevailed in three sets, but the scores were close (32-30, 25-20, 25-21).
 
Princeton, if it tops NJIT, will clinch a third straight berth into the semifinals of the annual EIVA postseason championship tournament to be played later in April.