Rutgers out-hit Penn. Rutgers out-killed Penn, out-blocked Penn and out-aced Penn. Rutgers won the only set of the four that was never in question. None of it counted for anything, because Rutgers also missed 17 serves.
The Scarlet Knights lost 23-25, 21-25, 25-17, 22-25 to Penn on Friday afternoon at Carnesecca Arena in Queens, a Friday afternoon match over in 102 minutes and was watched by an announced 67 people. Hold your jokes.
Rutgers hit .274 with 55 kills and 15 attack errors on 146 swings.
Penn hit .236 with 54 kills and 20 errors on 144. Rutgers had nine blocks to Penn’s six, four aces to Penn’s three and sided out at 64.8 percent against Penn’s 65.2. Across four sets Rutgers scored 91 points and Penn scored 92.
The entire margin was in the giveaways. Rutgers handed Penn 29 points on errors, 17 of them on serves that never landed in. Penn handed back 23.
Rutgers lost this match by one point and missed 17 serves.
Rutgers Erases 2-8 in the First & Misses Five Straight Serves in the Second
Penn opened on an 8-2 run and built most of it from the service line. Ellie Siskin had three kills in the stretch and an ace on Skylar George, Addison Pollock aced Avery Jesewitz, and Rutgers’ own contribution was two service errors, from Jesewitz and Imani Howell.
The climb back came one side out at a time. Natalie Robinson killed twice off Lily Bolen sets, Howell terminated twice, George aced Siskin, and Rutgers trailed 12-15 at the media timeout. Malia Romes’ kill off Bolen made it 15-16, Robinson found the floor at 16-16 and stuffed Haley Kerstetter solo for a 17-16 lead, Rutgers’ first of the match.
It lasted one rally.
Siskin killed to tie it, the teams traded to 20-20, and then Rutgers gave the set away in pieces with an Adell Murray kill, a George attack error, a Brooke Baldwin set that sailed. Kills by George and Aspen Maxwell cut it to 22-23 before a second Baldwin handling error handed Penn set point. Bolen served long. Five ties, two lead changes, and Rutgers out-hit Penn .189 to .135 in a set it lost.
The second had no argument in it at all. Rutgers tied it at 1-1 and never led again with one tie, no lead changes. Jenna Garner served three straight from 2-4 to 2-7 with a pair of Sanger kills in the middle, and Penn stayed four and five ahead. Romes kept Rutgers attached almost by herself with five kills in the set, every one off a Bolen set, and George’s ace on Pollock at 12-14 got Rutgers the ball.
Then Rutgers went to the service line five consecutive times and missed five consecutive serves. George, Kenzie Dyrstad, Baldwin, Kaila Kalama-Bajet and Howell each ended a Rutgers turn in the net or out of bounds, and the only point Rutgers scored across the whole stretch came on a Maxwell and Howell stuff of Garner.
Five turns at the service line, five serves that did not land in.
Rutgers still got within one at 19-20 on Maxwell’s kill and Bolen’s ace on Pollock. Murray answered, Sanger and Murray stuffed Romes, Garner aced George, and Sanger terminated twice in the last three rallies. Penn hit .364, its best set of the match.
Kenzie Dyrstad Serves Out the Third & Jenna Garner Serves Out the Match
Rutgers opened the third with Alleigh Dutton on the floor, had Karis Willow in by the sixth rally and hit .484. George served four straight from 3-3 to 7-3 on two Willow kills off Kenzie Dyrstad sets and an ace on Siskin. Kenzie Dyrstad served the bigger run, five straight from 8-4 to 13-4 with a Sanger attack error, a Willow kill, a Howell kill off Bolen, a Romes and Howell block assist on Garner and a Howell solo stuff of Lauryn Lewis.
The third was over before the media timeout.
Rutgers led 15-6 when it arrived and closed 25-17 on 16 kills, one attack error and 31 swings, Maxwell taking the last two points off Baldwin.
The fourth was the opposite kind of set. Fifteen ties, seven lead changes, and neither team ahead by more than two until the last five rallies. Skylar Greene came off the Penn bench and killed three times in 11 rallies. Rutgers went up 11-9 on a Maxwell kill off a rare Dutton assist, led 17-15 on Willow’s kill and 19-17 after Greene and Kerstetter both served long. Murray killed twice in a row to tie it at 19, and Maxwell answered off Baldwin.
Rutgers led 20-19, five points from a fifth set, was this another reverse sweep in the making?
Bolen served into the net.
Penn put Sanger back in, Garner went to the line and stayed there for four straight Penn points: a Sanger and Murray block assist on Romes, a George attack error, a Murray solo stuff of Robinson and a Sanger kill for match point at 20-24. Rutgers took its second timeout of the set in the middle of the run and it changed nothing.
The answer got two points. George killed off Bolen at 21-24, and Willow and Robinson stuffed Murray at 22-24 to force a Penn timeout with Rutgers serving.
The rally got to 22-24 and stopped there.
Murray killed off Moore on the next swing to end it, ending a five game win streak for Rutgers.
Stats Breakdown
Maxwell was the best player in Scarlet and the most efficient in the match with 16 kills, one attack error, 24 swings, .625, plus two block assists for 17 points. She scored in all four sets and Baldwin set 12 of the 16. Robinson had 10 kills on 29 swings and one error, .310, with a solo block and three assists for 12.5 points. Romes went for nine kills on 25 attempts, .240, and three block assists, all of it off the bench. Howell’s line was the quietest and the most complete, eight kills on 17 attempts for .412 with a match-high five total blocks and 11.5 points. Willow added six kills on 14 swings with one error, .357.
George led the match in attack attempts with 33 and finished at .000 on them, five kills against five attack errors, with three of Rutgers’ four aces, nine digs and two of the three balls Penn aced. The setting split was Baldwin 23, Bolen 18, Kenzie Dyrstad five. Kenzie Dyrstad also led Rutgers with 13 digs, and Penn out-dug Rutgers 73-57.
The serving line reads four aces against 17 service errors, four in the first set, five in the second, two in the third and six in the fourth, with Bolen and Howell missing four apiece and Baldwin three.
Penn got 15 kills on 25 swings from Murray at .520, with four total blocks and a match-high 17.5 points, and 11 kills on 31 attempts from Garner at .258 with 13 digs and an ace. Below those two the Quakers were inefficient and it did not matter: Siskin hit .160 with four attack errors on 25 swings and Sanger .111 with four errors on 27. Moore had 42 of Penn’s 51 assists, Pollock dug 19 and Siskin 18, and that back row is the reason .236 was enough.
What Didn’t Work (and One Thing That Did)
The serve, first and most obviously.
Seventeen service errors are 17 points Penn never had to earn, ouch. Six came in the fourth alone, including Bolen’s at 20-20 that put the ball in Garner’s hand for the run that decided it, and five came in the second in five consecutive turns at the line. Four aces is not a return on that kind of risk, and Penn, which missed 11, did not need one.
Serve receive was not the problem, which is worth saying out loud after a month of it being the problem. Rutgers gave up three aces, sided out at 64.8 percent against Penn’s 65.2 and passed well enough that Baldwin and Bolen ran a real offense in every set. Two of the three that dropped landed on George, the thread that keeps repeating, but three reception errors in four sets is a good afternoon.
Volume without efficiency is the other one. George took 33 swings, more than anyone on either side, and turned them into five kills and five attack errors. Some of that is where the ball goes when the pass is clean and a team splits setters, and some of it is a shot selection problem that has cost Rutgers points in consecutive matches. Karis Willow, for once, was not part of the complaint, as she had six kills on 14 swings with one error, and no stretch where she disappeared. This game was easily the cleanest she has looked since arriving from Penn State.
The one thing that did work was Aspen Maxwell. After a very shaky morning game against Bryant, she redeemed herself and hit .625 in a four-set match, 16 kills against a single attack error on 24 swings, against a Penn front row that put up six team blocks and three solo stuffs. Nobody else on either side cleared .520.
Rutgers is 8-3 and plays St. John’s tomorrow afternoon to close out the Jack Kaiser Volleyball Classic, and the non-conference slate.
The math from Queens is not complicated.
The Scarlet Knights were better than Penn at hitting, better at blocking and better at finishing rallies, and worse at the one part of volleyball an opponent has no say in. Those 17 serves were Rutgers’ alone to make.
