Box Score


NEWARK, NJ—Harvard, one of the top men's volleyball teams in the country, defeated NJIT 3-1 in a hard-fought Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association tilt Friday night in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
The visiting Crimson, ranked in the National Division I-II Top 15 most of the season, won the first set 25-23 before NJIT leveled things in the second set, 25-22. Harvard, currently the only team listed as "also receiving votes" in the national American Volleyball Coaches Association Top 15 poll, then took control with a 25-19 win in the third set and clinched the match by an identical score in a fourth set that saw 7 ties and 4 lead changes.
 
Harvard, which has won four of the last five, is 14-7 overall and 10-3 in the EIVA, while NJIT falls to 8-16 overall and 2-10 in the EIVA. The Crimson swept the Highlanders easily (25-16, 25-19, 25-14) when the teams faced each other on March 1 in Cambridge, MA.
 
NJIT played one of its better EIVA matches of the season, but Harvard's attack was more diverse and more efficient. The Crimson hit .387 as a team to .279 for NJIT and three Harvard hitters posted double-figures in the kills column, with a fourth just missing. NJIT had just one hitter with double-figure kills and two more who were close.
 
The hitting errors were close—Harvard made 16 to NJIT's 15—but the visitors had 15 more kills (64-49), which showed in a 52-38 advantage for the Crimson in digs (attacked balls defended at floor-level by the defense).
 
Harvard senior Nick Madden produced a match-high 16 kills, followed closely by teammates DJ White (16 kills) and Branden Clemens (14), with Caleb Zimmick (9 kills) adding a potent fourth hitter from the middle. Madden and Zimmick each made just three hitting errors, while White, an All-EIVA honoree in each of his first two seasons and a member of the United States U21 Men's National Team, committed just one attacking error.
 
 Kajetan Borecki, who is playing the best volleyball in his two seasons at NJIT, led the Highlanders with 15 kills. He had 16 kills in the last match on April 5 vs. George Mason. Chris Kaepernick, also hitting effectively in recent matches, finished with 9 kills and one error in 20 swings for a .400 hitting percentage. TJ Jurko (8 kills) and Ryan Thomas (7) also contributed good numbers to the Highlanders.
 
Freshman setter Nick Bendell was excellent for Harvard, giving good sets and spreading the ball to a variety of hitters for 52 assists. NJIT's Zak Robben finished with 32 assists.
 
Harvard doubled NJIT in service aces, 6-3, but the most notable numbers in that department were the unforced errors, where Harvard had 14 service errors and NJIT lost 11 points on serves it couldn't put into play. Zimmick of Harvard, with three aces, was the only player for either side with more than one ace, while a combined nine players on the two teams had more service errors than they had service aces.
 
With the 52-38 lead in digs, the Crimson got a match-leading 10 digs from Madden, who was also the match leader in the key offensive statistic of kills. White finished with 9 digs for the winners, while Bendell and Chris Gibbons, the libero, had 8 digs apiece for Harvard and Clemens finished with 7 digs.
 
The NJIT digs leader was libero Oren Zyndorf (8), with 7 each for Borecki and Jurko.
 
The Highlanders were the stronger blocking team on the night, recording 6.5 total team blocks to 4 for the visitors. Thomas led NJIT with 3 individual blocks (1 solo, 2 assisted) and Kaepernick and Jurko each added two block assists. Robben had a block solo for the home team.
 
Harvard did not have any solo blocks, but White collected three assisted blocks, followed by two block assists each for Zimmick and Kyle Rehkemper.
 
There were six ties in the opening set, but NJIT never led. There were ties at every point up to 6-6, but each time it was the Highlanders pulling even after being down one.
 
The start of the match was not pretty from either side, with six errors of various kinds figuring into the scoring that made the 6-6 tie. Indeed, it was an NJIT service error that put Harvard on top for what turned out to be the rest of the set, 7-6. An attack error by the Highlanders gave the visitors an 8-6 lead and the Crimson soon used consecutive kills by Rehkemper and Madden to claim a 12-8 lead.
 
Harvard did not extend its advantage beyond four points the rest of the set, but it was sufficient because NJIT could never get more than two points in a row, so Harvard eventually inched to the 25-23 win.
 
NJIT would win the second set, 25-22, but it was a slow process, as the Highlanders did not take their first lead until 11-10. A bit later, Jurko's kill made it 12-11 and Thomas followed with another kill for NJIT's first two-point advantage of the night.
 
Back-to-back kills for Borecki soon sparked a modest 7-5 spurt that extended the home team's lead to 22-18. With that relatively comfortable four-point edge, the Highlanders got two of their last three points of the set from freshman sub Dylan Lavner, who had a kill for the 23rd point and a block solo for set point.
 
The third set was a matter of extended spurts and the result favored Harvard. With the teams having split the first two extremely close frames, Harvard jumped out 3-0 and eventually led 10-3. NJIT replied with a 10-3 run of its own, knotting the score at 13-13.
 
But Zimmick broke the that tie with a kill for Harvard and then he and Clemens combined on a block for a 15-13 Crimson lead. With two big swings already in play to reach 13-13, Harvard used a 9-3 spurt to grab a 22-16 lead, with the only three NJIT points in that momentum swing coming on two Harvard service errors and a Borecki kill. NJIT eventually fell back into a 7-point hole before falling, 25-19. Madden had 7 kills in the set for Harvard.
 
The fourth set ended in the same score as the third, but it was closer for much of the frame before the visitors secured 12 of the last 16 points. There were ties early at 2, 3, and 6, before Harvard briefly went up by as many as three, 10-7. NJIT then produced a 6-2 run to take a 13-12 lead of its own. The Highlanders got their advantage to 15-13 after a Borecki kill, but that was the high-water mark for NJIT, as Harvard scored 12 of the final 16 points to secure set, 25-19, and match, 3-1.
 
Having lost to one of the nation's top teams in Division I-II (there are two NCAA Divisions in men's volleyball—Division I and II combined as I-II—and Division III), NJIT on Saturday will host Springfield, the two- time defending NCAA Division III National Champion. currently ranked first in the AVCA Division III national poll. That non-conference match is Saturday at 3 pm in the Fleisher Athletic Center.