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Post Game Interview
NEWARK, NJ—Visiting Lipscomb showed why it is one of the top women's volleyball teams in the Atlantic Sun Conference, as the Bisons swept past NJIT, 25-15, 25-13, and 25-10 in the A-Sun opener for both teams Friday night in the Fleisher Athletic Center.
Lipscomb, from Nashville, Tennessee, has represented the A-Sun as conference champion in the NCAA Tournament four times since 2007 and the Bisons became the A-Sun's first-ever at-large participant in the NCAAs last season, giving them five NCAA berths in eight years.
With Friday night's victory, Lipscomb is 8-6 overall this season and 1-0 in the Atlantic Sun. The program's all-time record in conference play is 125-39 in its 13th season in the A-Sun.
The Highlanders, in turn, were playing its first all-time match as a member of its new conference. NJIT's overall record in 2015 is 4-10.
Lipscomb won Friday on the strength of a near-flawless attack that saw the visitors knock down 34 kills to just six attack errors, with an impressive .444 team attack percentage. NJIT was hurt by its own attack errors, committing 25 in the match.
Seven of the NJIT hitting errors came on attacks that were blocked by the Lipscomb front line. On the floor, the digs totals were close, with Lipscomb coming up with 26 digs to 22 for the Highlanders.
Individually, the Lipscomb attack was diverse, with no hitter getting more than eight kills, but five players notching at least five kills. Senior Molly Spitznagle's eight kills led Lipscomb with eight kills, followed closely by seven kills from classmate Brittney Estes.
Junior setter Kayla Ostrom accounted for 27 of Lipscomb's 31 assists.
Much as in the attack, Lipscomb's floor defense was a team effort, with eight players coming up with at least one dig and Brittany Thomas, a sophomore libero, leading the Bisons with seven digs.
At the net, the winners had 12 individual block assists and one block solo, which came from Chloe Thomas, who also had a block assist. Ostrom, the setter, was Lipscomb's leader in total blocks (4), all of which were block assists.
The kills leaders for NJIT were
Anneka Harris and
Danica Vukotic, with five apiece. Freshman setter
Emily Krachenfels collected 17 assists to top the home team in that department.
Freshman
Adriana Nieto, NJIT's libero, notched a match-best nine digs on defense.
Feeding off of the large boisterous crowd in the home opener, the Highlanders went toe-to-toe with Lipscomb well into the opening set and NJIT trailed just 8-9 before the visitors gained some separation with a 5-0 run that made the score 14-8.
The Highlanders continued to trade points with the Bisons, but couldn't make inroads before Lipscomb went on a 5-2 spurt that extended the lead from 17-12 to 22-14. The visitors finished off the 25-15 opening set with three points scored on NJIT errors.
Lipscomb took control of the second set a bit sooner than it had in the opening frame, stretching a 10-7 lead to 18-7 with an 8-0 run. The closest the Highlanders got after that was nine points at 9-18 and the visitors coasted, 25-13.
Lipscomb moved in for the kill and dominated the third frame, hitting .571 in the frame on eight kills without an error in 14 swings on the way to a 25-10 win in the clinching set.
Having debuted in the Atlantic Sun on Friday, NJIT will step back out of conference play for a pair of matches, starting with a 5 pm home match Saturday in the Fleisher Athletic Center against Penn.
