Friday night in Lincoln was the No. 1 team in the country doing what it does, and nobody at Rutgers pretended otherwise. Saturday night in Iowa was supposed to be the other half of the opening weekend, the half with a set in it.
They did not have one.
Rutgers lost 16-25, 23-25, 21-25 to Iowa at Xtream Arena in front of 1,070, a match over in 97 minutes, and is now six sets into Big Ten play without winning any of them.
Iowa hit .271 with 44 kills and 15 attack errors on 107 swings. Rutgers hit .145
with 34 kills and 18 errors on 110. Rutgers out-blocked Iowa nine to four and out-aced it seven to six, and none of it mattered, because Iowa sided out at 64.5 percent and Rutgers at 52.1. Rutgers made 25 attack and service errors. Iowa made 18.
Two of the three sets were Rutgers’ to take. It tied the second at 23 after trailing 18-23, and it led the third 20-19. Across the rest of both sets it scored one point, on an Iowa service error.
Rutgers is still looking for its first Big Ten set.
Rutgers Hits .048 in the First & Runs Out of Room at 23-23
Rutgers started the first like they had forgotten Friday. Imani Howell and Aspen Maxwell killed off Brooke Baldwin sets for a 2-0 lead, Maxwell did it again for 4-2, and that was the last time Rutgers led the set. Hannah Whittingstall killed twice in a row off Jenna Meitzler to tie it, Malia Romes hit out for Iowa’s first lead at 4-5, and the set went level six times without Rutgers getting back in front.
The ties were not pretty. Karis Willow aced Allison Berent to tie it at 11 and missed her next serve, Howell killed to tie it at 12 and missed hers, and Romes hit out into the media timeout at 13-15.
Iowa scored 12 of the last 15 points. Whittingstall aced Willow at 14-17, and at 15-19 Meitzler went to the service line and Rutgers attacked its way out of the set. Liv Mogridge and Rosa Vesty stuffed Howell, Howell hit out, Romes hit out, Willow hit out.
Four straight attack errors, and a second Rutgers timeout.
Romes’ kill off Lily Bolen stopped it at 16-23, and Ksenija Tomic and Mogridge stuffed Maxwell to end it two rallies later. Rutgers hit .048 in the set. Iowa hit .294.
The second was the better set and the one that hurt. Rutgers led 7-4 on Howell’s kill off Baldwin, and then Whittingstall went through the Rutgers front row and the back row in the same rotation. She stuffed Howell solo at 7-5, aced Skylar George and Kenzie Dyrstad on consecutive serves to tie it, and Maxwell hit out for an 8-7 Iowa lead.
Willow’s ace put Rutgers back ahead 9-8, she missed her next serve, and Iowa led the rest of the way from 9-10, three to six points ahead for most of it. Henlee Moszkowicz aced Kaila Kalama-Bajet at 11-16 and Whittingstall aced Avery Jesewitz at 15-21, her third of the set.
Maxwell killed off Baldwin at 18-23 and Bolen went to the service line. She aced Berent. Tomic hit out, and Iowa called timeout. A Meitzler set went wrong for 21-23, George and Natalie Robinson stuffed Vesty for 22-23, and Iowa called its second timeout. George and Robinson stuffed Vesty again.
Five straight Bolen serves, and it was 23-23.
This tie went no further. Vesty killed off Meitzler for set point and Whittingstall ended it on the next rally. Seven ties, three lead changes, and Rutgers out-hit Iowa .303 to .278 in a set it lost, largely because Iowa served four aces in it.
Rutgers Leads the Third 20-19 & Marichka Hoshylyk Takes It Away
Alleigh Dutton started the third in Kalama-Bajet’s place, and Rutgers opened with its best stretch of the weekend. Howell served three straight from 1-2 with a Robinson and George stuff of Vesty, a Robinson solo stuff of Whittingstall and an ace on Moszkowicz, and Kenzie Dyrstad’s serve pushed it to 9-5 and an Iowa timeout.
Meitzler answered with a kill and an ace of her own, and Iowa tied it at 9. Willow’s serve then produced the other half of her night, two straight aces for 14-11 and a service error for 14-12, and George killed off Baldwin for 15-12 at the media timeout.
Marichka Hoshylyk, off the Iowa bench, killed at 15-13 and 16-14, and the set was tied four straight times from 17-17 to 20-20, with Rutgers going back ahead after each of the first three. Maxwell’s kill off Baldwin made it 20-19.
Rutgers led 20-19.
Hoshylyk killed on the next rally to tie it. Moszkowicz went to the line and stayed there for four straight Iowa points, with Vesty’s kill for 20-21, a Rutgers timeout, Hoshylyk’s kill for 20-22, a Maxwell attack error for 20-23, a second Rutgers timeout and Whittingstall’s kill for match point at 20-24.
Moszkowicz missed her fifth serve. Howell served the next one, Hoshylyk set it, and Vesty put it down.
Seven ties and two lead changes, and Hoshylyk had all four of her kills in the set, two of them after Rutgers led 20-19. A forgettable start to conference play.
Stats Breakdown
Howell was the best player in Scarlet with nine kills on 19 swings at .316, three total blocks, an ace and 12 points, second in the match only to Whittingstall. Romes had eight kills, all off Bolen, and five attack errors on 24 swings for .125, all of it off the bench. Maxwell finished with seven kills, all off Baldwin, and four errors on 18 attempts, .167.
Natalie Robinson swung nine times without an error for three kills and led the match with six total blocks. George hit .143 with five kills and two errors on 21 swings, plus three block assists, five digs, an ace and three service errors. Willow finished at minus-.176 with one kill and four errors on 17 swings, to go with four aces and three service errors.
The setting split was Baldwin 18, Bolen 14 and Kenzie Dyrstad two, and it split along the pins, Baldwin feeding Maxwell and Howell and Bolen feeding Romes. Kenzie Dyrstad led Rutgers with 14 digs, and Iowa out-dug Rutgers 48-44. The serve came out even at seven aces and seven errors. After 34 missed serves in Queens, Rutgers has 11 aces and 11 service errors through two Big Ten matches.
Whittingstall was the best player on the floor overall with 10 kills and one error on 19 swings, .474, four aces and a match-high 15 points. Mogridge added 10 kills at .333, and Vesty 10 more at .167 with six attack errors, five of them stuffed. Meitzler set 39 of Iowa’s 42 assists and Moszkowicz dug 15. Hallie Steponaitis hit .000 on five kills and five errors, and nothing else about the Iowa attack needed to hold up.
What Didn’t Work (and One Thing That Did)
Serve receive, first and most obviously.
Iowa served six aces and they did not land on one player, with Willow, George, Kenzie Dyrstad, Jesewitz and Kalama-Bajet each taking one and Meitzler’s credited to no one. For once the thread was not George being hunted. It was everyone, and Rutgers sided out at 52.1 percent.
The offense did not finish rallies either. Rutgers took three more swings than Iowa and finished with 10 fewer kills, and the first set got away on four consecutive attack errors that Iowa did not have to earn.
Then there is Karis Willow.
Four aces, tied for the match lead. One kill. Eight total errors, the most on the floor. Her two straight aces put Rutgers up 14-11 in the third and her attack error tied it at 18. She is still the clearest single picture of this team, the best stretch of a set and the worst of it inside the same half hour, and on Saturday the whole team looked that way.
The one thing that did work was the block, and most of it was Natalie Robinson. She was in on six of Rutgers’ nine team blocks, and Vesty got stuffed five times, twice in a row to tie the second at 23. It kept Rutgers in two sets. It was never going to win them on a night the pass and the finish both went missing.
Rutgers is 9-5 and 0-2 in the Big Ten and goes to Ohio State on Thursday for the first of its Big Ten Discover Challenge matches, then comes home to Jersey Mike’s Arena for Indiana on Sunday at 2 p.m., the conference home opener on Homecoming weekend.
The first Big Ten set is still out there.
Friday was a No. 1 team being a No. 1 team. Saturday was Rutgers leading late in two sets and finishing neither, which is the more fixable problem, and the more frustrating one.
