Penn State women's volleyball earns first conference win of the season over Rutgers

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State women’s volleyball earned its first conference win, defeating the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in three sets.

Initially, it seemed as if this match would be close with an attack error on Penn State followed by kills from both sides. However, the key player of the match, senior Jess Mruzik, went on the prowl earning three kills in a row to help put the Nittany Lions at a nine-to-eight lead. Mruzik previously earned her 1000th career kill against Colgate on Saturday.

Immediately after, Rutgers was caught standing around the campfire giving Penn State a point followed by a service error. Service errors and lack of communication would prove to be an Achilles heel of the Rutgers offense throughout the match.

Redshirt sophomore Rikki Williams for Rutgers revived the offense, earning her fourth kill of the set immediately followed by another Rutgers service error. Toward the end of set one, Penn State started to show off their defense with sophomore libero Gillian Grimes earning four digs.

The end of set one saw impressively placed kills by senior Camryn Hannah and Mruzik, both lobbing it over the Rutgers defensive blockers. The Nittany Lions took the first set 25-to-17 with a kill by senior Allie Holland.

The second set proved to be the Nittany Lions’ most dominant, starting immediately with another kill by Mruzik and a block by Holland to shut down a long back-and-forth rally.

This set also proved to be trouble for the Scarlet Knights’ defense, started by an error on the block by fifth-year senior Alyssa Nayar.

The crowd at Rec Hall roared to life following a monster block by sophomore Alexa Markley, and the home-court advantage seemed to work in the Nittany Lions’ favor with a service error on Rutgers shortly following.

The Nittany Lions’ defense seemed to shine through despite numerous kills by multiple players, including Holland and Mruzik. Notably, Grimes racked up eight digs and ended up finishing the game with over 100 digs on the season.

At this point, it was clear Rutgers was struggling to come back defensively following kill attempts by the Nittany Lions. They finished with their largest deficit of the night following a kill from Holland and Penn State took the set 25-to-15.

The third set was marked by a competitive start, with both teams flip-flopping back and forth with the lead. Rutgers redshirt sophomore Alissa Kinkela earned her sixth kill of the match followed by sophomore Taylor Humphrey, capitalizing on a lack of communication from the Nittany Lions' defense.

Rutgers also cleaned up their defense, with senior Kristina Grkovic earning a block followed later by a Penn State service error.

Then, the blue and white woke up. Hannah and Mruzik had back-to-back kills which rattled the Scarlet who then had three attacking errors putting the score at 13-to-7.

Mruzik pushed Penn State to the edge of victory later in the set with her 18th kill, making it 21-14. Rutgers crawled forward hoping to stop the bleeding with a kill by Grkovic and another block by Williams and to close the gap to 23-16.

In the end, it was Hannah who sealed the Nittany Lions’ victory with one final kill.

Head coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley said that her team has no plans of slowing down as they enter conference play.

“This conference is relentless, and every team has great players and competes hard. You know, we didn’t play great last year against Northwestern, and so we need to take care of business and take each match one at a time.”

The Nittany Lions travel to take on Northwestern on Sept. 24 at 2 p.m.

Olivia Dunne is a third-year studying broadcast journalism. To contact her, email opd5045@psu.edu.