Eight straight losses give a team plenty of practice at losing. On Thursday night, Rutgers found a way they had not tried yet.
Five days after Illinois swept them on Pink Out night at Jersey Mike’s Arena, Rutgers went to West Lafayette without Aspen Maxwell or Imani Howell in the box score, won the third set without trailing once and led the fourth 8-6. Then Purdue scored 13 straight points, 11 of them with Sienna Foster serving.
The Scarlet Knights lost 15-25, 18-25, 25-16, 14-25 to Purdue at Holloway
Gymnasium, in a match that was over in 110 minutes in front of 2,108. Purdue played without Kenna Wollard, one of its three returning All-Americans, and did not need her.
Purdue hit .276 to Rutgers’ .154, out-killed Rutgers 50-44, out-blocked it 10.5-7 and out-aced it 9-6. Rutgers made 23 attack errors on 136 swings to Purdue’s 16 on 123, missed eight serves to Purdue’s five and sided out at 51.1 percent to Purdue’s 64.4. Across four sets Purdue scored 91 points and Rutgers scored 72.
Rutgers did not win another rally until they trailed 8-19.
Rutgers Hits .111 in the First, .306 in the Second & Loses Both
Rutgers started Avery Jesewitz alongside Skylar George, Natalie Robinson and Malia Romes, and the first set was even for about 10 rallies. George killed off a Brooke Baldwin set for 1-0, Jesewitz and Robinson stuffed Dior Charles for 3-1, and Addy Tindall hit out on Baldwin’s serve for 5-3.
Rutgers still led 5-4 when Elle Schara went to the line and served three straight, with Lameen Mambu, Charles and Grace Heaney killing for 5-7. Ryan McAleer followed with three of her own from 6-8 to 6-11, an ace on Kaila Kalama-Bajet in the middle of it and a Rutgers timeout at 6-10 that did not stop it. The set had three ties and one lead change, all of it before 5-6.
Karis Willow, off the bench, kept Rutgers attached with five kills in the set, four of them off Baldwin. Tindall did more. She killed six times in the first, three of them in four rallies from 8-14 to 9-16 with the media timeout arriving at 9-15, and Purdue led by six or more the rest of the way.
Then Romes ended it herself. She hit out for 14-23, Rutgers called time, and she hit out again for set point. Willow saved one at 15-24, and on the next rally Kate Hansen and Mambu stuffed Romes. Three of Purdue’s last four points were Romes attack errors.
Rutgers hit .111 in the set. Purdue hit .355.
The second was cleaner and went the same way. Hansen served Purdue to 0-3 with an ace on Kenzie Dyrstad, Jesewitz solo-stuffed Heaney at 2-4, and Romes went to the line and aced MaryKate Scheumann and Tindall on back-to-back serves to tie it 4-4.
That was the only tie of the set.
Schara answered the same way, acing Alleigh Dutton twice in a row for 4-7. Heaney and Hansen killed on McAleer’s serve for 6-10 and another Rutgers timeout, and Purdue led by three or more for the rest of the set. Rutgers got as close as 15-18 on a Willow kill off a Dutton set.
That was as close as it got.
Jesewitz hit out on McAleer’s serve, Rutgers burned its second timeout at 15-20, and Mambu and Heaney killed on the next two rallies. Baldwin was called for a handling error at 16-24, George and a Heaney attack error saved two set points, and Mambu ended it 18-25 off an Isabelle Bardin set.
Heaney had six kills in the set. Rutgers hit .306, their best set of the night, and lost it by seven because Purdue hit .371 and served four aces, every one of them on a named passer with Kenzie Dyrstad, Dutton twice and Jesewitz.
A Wire-to-Wire Third, Then 11 Straight on Sienna Foster’s Serve
George opened the third with a kill off a Kenzie Dyrstad set, then aced McAleer and Tindall on consecutive serves for 3-0 before missing her third. Rutgers never trailed and never let it get tied. Purdue missed four serves in the set and committed seven attack errors, and two of the misses, by Schara and McAleer, came in the 7-3 and 9-4 rallies that built the first real lead.
Rutgers led 15-8 at the media timeout after Bianka Lulic hit out on Baldwin’s serve, and Heaney hit out on the next one for 16-8. Willow and Romes stuffed Mambu at 18-9 to bring Purdue’s only timeout of the night. Jesewitz and Robinson stuffed Heaney at 22-12, and Baldwin, of all people, put away a Dutton set for 24-13.
Eleven set points. Rutgers needed four of them.
Dutton served into the net, Bardin aced the next ball and Tindall killed off her, and Bardin finally ended it by missing a serve of her own, 25-16. Rutgers hit .300 with two errors on 30 swings. Purdue hit .065. It was Rutgers’ first set win since Michigan State six days earlier.
The fourth started like a match.
Hansen solo-stuffed Robinson on the first rally, George killed and aced Tindall for 2-1, and the teams traded through six ties and four lead changes in the first 16 rallies. Rutgers got a point on a Taylor Anderson bad set at 4-5, Jesewitz and Romes stuffed Heaney to tie it 5-5, Romes killed twice for 6-5 and 7-6, and Willow and Romes stuffed Mambu on Kalama-Bajet’s serve for 8-6.
That was the last lead Rutgers held.
Mambu killed to side out, Willow hit out on Heaney’s serve for 8-8, and Purdue sent Foster to the line.
She aced the first ball she served. Mambu killed. Hansen and Mambu stuffed Romes, Hansen and Anderson stuffed George, and Rutgers called time at 8-12. Anderson killed out of the timeout, Hansen stuffed Romes alone, and Mambu killed into the media timeout at 8-15. Foster aced Kenzie Dyrstad, Hansen killed, Romes hit out, and Mambu killed again for 8-19.
Eleven serves, 11 Purdue points, with two aces, five kills, three blocks with Hansen in on all of them and one Romes attack error.
Zharia Harris-Waddy, on the floor for the only set she played, finally ended it with a kill off Baldwin at 9-19. George hit out, killed, hit out and killed again over the next four rallies, served Rutgers to 13-21 and was stuffed by Heaney and Charles at 13-23. Robinson hit out for match point, Anderson missed a serve to give one back, and Heaney killed off Anderson to end it.
Rutgers hit minus-.088 in the fourth with eight kills and 11 attack errors on 34 swings, five of the errors into the block. Purdue hit .308.
Stats Breakdown
George led everyone in Scarlet with 12 kills, but needed a match-high 40 swings to get them and made eight attack errors for a .100 line. She added three of Rutgers’ six aces, two assists and seven digs for 15 points, tied with Mambu for the match lead, and Purdue did not ace her once. Maxwell, who played the first two sets against Illinois, did not appear, and Howell missed a third straight match.
Willow had nine kills on 25 swings with three errors off the bench, .240, and all nine came in the first two sets. She had none in the third and fourth, which is the season’s pattern compressed into one night, very good for a stretch and then gone.
Robinson had the steadiest line in Scarlet, eight kills on 19 attempts at .263 with two block assists. Romes finished with seven kills and six errors on 19 swings, .053, plus two aces and four block assists for 11 points. All six of her errors came in two stretches, three in the first set’s last four rallies and three during Foster’s run. Jesewitz hit .074 on 27 swings with five kills and three errors, tied Romes for the team lead with four blocks, one of them solo, and was aced twice.
Baldwin set 32 of Rutgers’ 39 assists, added two kills on five swings and led the team with 11 digs. Lily Bolen started all four sets and did not record an assist, so the two-setter split came out 32 to zero. Rutgers served six aces against eight errors, with Dutton missing four, and Purdue out-dug Rutgers 54-49.
Mambu, a Georgia Tech transfer, came off the Purdue bench for 13 kills on 29 swings, .310, five of them in the fourth. Hansen hit .667 with six kills and no errors on nine swings and had a match-high six blocks, two solo and four in the fourth. Heaney and Tindall took 64 swings between them and hit .176 and .167, and Tindall was aced three times, twice by George. Anderson set 36 and McAleer dug 12. Purdue’s two highest-volume attackers hit under .180, and it did not matter, because Rutgers’ were worse.
What Didn’t Work (and One Thing That Did)
The fourth set, first and most obviously.
Rutgers led it 8-6 and lost it 14-25. Foster served 11 straight, and the timeout at 8-12 did nothing to slow her. Over the set Rutgers hit minus-.088, and five of their 11 attack errors went into a Purdue block with Hansen in four of them. Thirteen straight points in a tied set is not a bad rotation, it is a match ending in the middle of a set.
Serve receive, again.
Purdue served nine aces, and seven landed on four different Rutgers passers, with Dutton taking two in a row from Schara in the second, Jesewitz two, Kenzie Dyrstad two and Kalama-Bajet one. The wrinkle is where they did not go. George, the passer opponents have hunted all season, was not aced once. Purdue simply served somewhere else, and it worked just as well.
The attack without its depth.
With Maxwell and Howell out, Rutgers swung 136 times and hit .154. George took 40 of those swings because somebody had to, and Jesewitz and Romes combined for .065 on 46 more. Maxwell hit .625 against Penn in September. Rutgers did not have her Thursday, and nobody did it instead.
The one thing that did work was the third set.
Rutgers led it from the first rally to the last, hit .300 with two attack errors, served three aces and put up two blocks. Some of it was Purdue, which gave away 11 points on seven attack errors and four missed serves. The rest was Rutgers finally finishing rallies, George setting the tone at the service line and Baldwin running a clean offense. For 25 points, the Scarlet Knights looked like a team that could beat Purdue on the road.
Then I took off my rose-tinted glasses and reality hit.
Rutgers is 10-13 and 1-10 in the Big Ten and stays on the road for Northwestern on Saturday at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston.
That makes eight straight.
The third set showed Rutgers can play with Purdue for 25 points. Foster’s 11 serves showed how fast that stops counting.!
