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 Paludo had a season-high 37 kills |
March 6, 2007
NEWARK, NJ - New Jersey Institute of Technology finally subdued visiting East Stroudsburg, 3-2, in a cross-divisional Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association men's volleyball match Tuesday night in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
The match looked for all the world as if it would be a 3-0 Highlander win about an hour before the match ended, but East Stroudsburg battled hard and long, before falling to NJIT in five game.
The Highlanders, who raised their season record to 10-4, won the first two games, 30-24 and 30-27, respectively, and had potential match point at 29-27 in game three. They couldn't get it then or in any of four more opportunities, before East Stroudsburg ran off the last three points of the game for a 34-32 win.
The visitors knotted the match with a 30-24 victory in game four, before NJIT finally took the deciding game, 15-11.
Leonardo Paludo accounted for 40 points in the two-hour affair, notching a match and team season-high 37 kills in 71 attempts. He had just 11 errors, finishing with a .355 attack percentage. NJIT sophomore setter Rodrigo Correa passed for a career-high 65 assists.
Paludo's 37 kills and Correa's 65 assists were the most for NJIT in a single match over the last two seasons.
Eduardo Welter, moving out of the defensive libero position for the first time this season, notched 19 kills and 4 blocks. He also had a match-high 17 digs.
Amobi Armstrong also notched double figures in kills, with 13. Armstrong and Chris Siddayao, in for Welter at libero, each had 10 digs.
Greg Wagner didn't reach double-figure kills, but he had a fine .471 attack percentage (9 kills, 1 error, 17 attempts). Brian Gadaleta had a team-leading 5 blocks.
Jon Daley led East Stroudsburg in kills (21) and blocks (6) and service aces (3), while Keith Eckenrode had 15 kills and a .400 attack percentage (15 kills, 3 errors, 30 attempts). Jesse Landis added 11 kills. RJ Roth's 12 digs paced the Warriors.
The win was significant for NJIT as a measure of both its improvement from last year and for its relative status within the EIVA.
A year ago, East Stroudsburg won the EIVA Hay Division with a 10-2 divisional record, two games ahead of 8-4 NJIT. As a result, East Stroudsburg, which took both of last year's matches from the Highlanders, earned promotion to the higher-rated Tait Division.
While cross-divisional matches don't count in the EIVA standings, the Highlanders are now 3-1 against teams from the strong Tait Division, adding the win over East Stroudsburg to triumphs against Rutgers-Newark and George Mason, along with a defeat at the hands of Juniata. In addition, NJIT owns a win over NYU, which is the team that dropped down to the Hay when East Stroudsburg moved up to the Tait.
The Highlanders will refocus on divisional play when they host Harvard in an EIVA Hay Division match on Friday at 7 pm in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
