Three days after sweeping Ohio State, Rutgers came home with the same question it left Columbus with. Imani Howell and Malia Romes hit a combined .629 against the Buckeyes, and a sweep built on two players was going to need both of them again on Sunday.
They got one of them. Rutgers lost 20-25, 25-17, 21-25, 24-26 to No. 15 Indiana on Sunday afternoon at Jersey Mike’s Arena, a Big Ten home opener on Homecoming Weekend that drew 1,782 and the BTN cameras and was over in 124 minutes.
Rutgers out-killed
Indiana 55-53, the second time in less than three weeks it has put down 55 kills in a four-set loss, and hit .233 with 24 attack errors on 133 swings. Indiana hit .288 with 17 errors on 125. The Hoosiers out-blocked Rutgers 11-8, the teams traded five aces apiece, and Indiana sided out at 61.5 percent to Rutgers’ 59.8. Across four sets Rutgers scored 90 points and Indiana scored 93.
Rutgers won the second 25-17 and did not lead again, not once in the 96 rallies that followed.
Eight ties after the second set, and not one lead.
Indiana Hits .542 in the First & Rutgers Never Trails in the Second
Rutgers led 5-3 when Addison Wiemann missed a serve, and Avry Tatum, on from the Indiana bench three rallies into the match, served the Hoosiers to 5-7 with an ace on Kami Dyrstad and attack errors by Skylar George and Howell on consecutive swings. George answered from the same spot, serving four straight from 8-10 on a Natalie Robinson and Romes stuff of Jaidyn Jager, a Robinson kill and kills by Romes and George off Lily Bolen sets.
Tatum’s second ace on Kami Dyrstad made it 15-16, and George killed twice in a row off Brooke Baldwin sets for a 17-16 lead.
Indiana won nine of the last 12 rallies.
Ella Boersema went to the service line at 18-19, and Keondreya Granberry stuffed Romes solo, killed without an assist, and Jager killed off an Emma Segal set for 18-22. Granberry earned set point and Tatum ended it 20-25. Seven ties, five lead changes, and Rutgers hit .346 in a set it lost by five, because Indiana hit .542 with one attack error on 24 swings. Granberry had six of Indiana’s 14 kills, and Romes six of Rutgers’ 15, five of them off Bolen.
The second was the opposite. Rutgers scored the first point, tied once at 1-1 and never trailed. Wiemann aced Jager for 5-2, Howell served from 6-3 to 8-3 on a Teodora Krikovi bad set and a Boersema attack error, and Rutgers led 15-7 at the media timeout. Indiana gave away nine points in the set on its own errors, which is generous for a top-15 team, and hit .225. Rutgers committed one attack error on 34 swings and hit .382.
Aspen Maxwell had four kills in the set, all off Baldwin, plus a solo stuff of Sara Snowbarger for 23-16. Her kill made it 24-16, and George closed it 25-17 off Baldwin.
Rutgers would not lead again.
Eight Ties, No Leads & a Block to End It
Tatum stuffed Wiemann twice in the first three rallies of the third, once solo and once with Granberry. Rutgers tied it at 3 on Kenzie Dyrstad’s serve, and then Kenzie Dyrstad missed the next one. Segal served three straight from 5-7 to 5-10, two of them attack errors from George and Maxwell, and Indiana led 6-12.
Rutgers crawled back one serve at a time. George aced Jager for 11-13 and then missed her next serve, which is the Rutgers serving experience in miniature. Baldwin went to the line at 14-16 and tied it with Howell and Maxwell kills off her own sets, and Rutgers tied it again at 17 and 18. Indiana won the rally after every one of those ties.
Boersema served Indiana to 18-21 with a Jager solo stuff of Maxwell in it. George killed for 19-21, Granberry answered, and then Granberry and Tatum stuffed George and she committed an attack error on her next swing for 19-24. Indiana gave back two set points on its own errors before Tatum ended it 21-25. Rutgers hit .088 in the third, 12 kills and nine errors on 34 swings, and George had three of each.
The fourth started the same way. Granberry stuffed Robinson solo for 0-2, and Hannah Leftridge served three straight from 2-4 to 2-7, a Boersema solo stuff of Howell, a Wiemann attack error and a Snowbarger and Boersema stuff of Maxwell. Karis Willow came on at 2-6, and her first swing found the floor off Baldwin. Segal then aced Rutgers on consecutive serves, the second on Kenzie Dyrstad, and Jager’s kill made it 6-12.
Willow kept Rutgers attached, killing twice in a row off Bolen for 10-14 and again off a Romes set for 11-16. Indiana still led 16-20 when Romes killed off Bolen and George went to the service line.
George aced the next ball. Jager committed an attack error and then a ball handling error, Indiana burned both timeouts, and Willow stuffed Granberry solo to tie it at 20. Five straight Rutgers points, four on George’s serve, and the first tie of the set.
George missed the next serve.
Romes tied it again at 21 off Bolen. A Willow and Howell stuff of Tatum and a Tatum attack error tied it at 23. Tatum killed off Krikovi for match point, Howell saved it off Baldwin, and Tatum killed again for 24-25. On the second match point Boersema and Krikovi stuffed George.
Four ties, no lead changes, and Indiana won the rally after every one of them, three times on a Tatum kill. Rutgers hit .154 in the fourth. Indiana hit .200 and did not need more.
Stats Breakdown
Romes was the best player in Scarlet and the best on the floor with 16 kills, three attack errors and 26 swings for .500, three block assists and a match-high 17.5 points. She started after coming off the bench in all three sets in Columbus, and Bolen set 14 of her 16 kills.
George added 10 kills on 27 swings with five errors for .185, three of Rutgers’ five aces and 13 points. Howell hit .176 with eight kills and five errors on 17 swings, though her two solo stuffs and a block assist got her to 11.5 points. Maxwell went seven kills and six errors on 20 attempts for .050, every kill off Baldwin, and Wiemann, also starting after coming off the bench in Columbus, had five kills and four errors on 22 swings for .045. Robinson hit .400 on only 10 swings. Willow played only the fourth and went four kills on nine swings without an error, with a solo block and a block assist.
The setting split was Baldwin 26 and Bolen 23. The Dyrstad sisters shared the floor in all four sets, Kami coming on within the first dozen rallies of each one alongside Kenzie. Kenzie led the match with 16 digs, Kami set Romes for a kill at 10-5 in the second, and Indiana out-dug Rutgers 45-44. Rutgers served five aces against nine service errors, Baldwin, Kenzie Dyrstad and George missing two apiece. Indiana’s five aces landed twice on Kami Dyrstad, once on Kenzie Dyrstad and twice on the team, and none on George, the second straight match an opponent has not found her in serve receive.
Indiana got 14 kills from Jager on a match-high 32 swings at .312, though George aced her twice and Wiemann once. Tatum came off the bench in the first, started the last three and finished with 12 kills at .333, two aces, three total blocks and 16 points. Granberry had 11 kills and six errors on 22 swings, .227, and Boersema hit .353 with a match-high five total blocks, three of them solo. Below those four, Snowbarger hit .118, and it did not matter. Krikovi had 42 assists and Leftridge 12 digs.
What Didn’t Work (and One Thing That Did)
Everything that was not Malia Romes, first.
Take Romes out and the rest of the attack hit .168, 39 kills and 21 attack errors on 107 swings. Maxwell and Wiemann combined for 12 kills and 10 errors on 42 swings, and Indiana blocked 11 balls, three of them Wiemann’s and five with Boersema’s hands on them. The pins problem from Columbus did not go away, it just moved around the lineup. Seventeen of Rutgers’ 24 attack errors came in the third and fourth, the two sets it never led.
The ties, second.
Rutgers tied the third and fourth eight times and lost the next rally all eight times, twice on its own missed serves. In Queens, Bolen missed a serve with Rutgers up 20-19 in the fourth and Penn ran off four straight from there. On Sunday George erased a four-point deficit from the service line and then missed at 20-20. That is not bad luck, that is a team that has not figured out what to do with a set once it has chased it down.
Eight chances. Zero leads.
The one thing that did work was Romes. She hit .500 in a match where nobody else in Scarlet with more than 10 swings cleared .190, scored in all four sets and was in on three of Rutgers’ eight team blocks. On Thursday she was half of a two-player sweep. On Sunday she was the half that showed up again.
Rutgers is 10-6 and 1-3 in the Big Ten and stays home for No. 20 Minnesota on Friday and UCLA on Saturday, both at 7 p.m. at Jersey Mike’s Arena.
Then it flies west for No. 22 Washington and No. 17 Oregon.
Romes showed up again. The rest of the attack hit .168.
