Oct. 6, 2007
Final Stats | Photo Gallery 1 
| Photo Gallery 2
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – A pair of players for the University of Notre Dame volleyball team managed to hit over .500 in an Irish win over Rutgers Saturday at the Joyce Center. Junior Justine Stremick (Langdon, N.D./Langdon Area) finished with a .706 clip while senior Adrianna Stasiuk (Park Ridge, Ill./Maine South) blitzed the Scarlet Knights with a .550 mark to lead Notre Dame in its 3-0 (30-16, 30-18, 30-20) win.
In fact, the last time an Irish (7-8 overall, 3-2 BIG EAST) player hit over .700 in a match was when Stremick checked in with a .750 average in a 3-0 win over South Florida last season. Today against Rutgers (3-11 overall, 1-4 BIG EAST), she converted 13 of 17 swings with one error and had six blocks to lead the Irish defense.
Stasiuk’s season-high average came with 12 kills and 10 digs, with sophomore Serinity Phillips (Valley Center, Calif./Valley Center) and freshman Kellie Sciacca (Monument, Colo./Lewis-Palmer) each adding eight successful attacks.
“Offensively, Justine showed us what she can on a regular basis,” said head coach Debbie Brown. “But you have to give credit to the passers and setters on the floor who did a great job of finding her to get those good shots.”
Contributing to the team’s .433 attack percentage – its best of the season and highest since a .451 average against South Florida on Oct. 21, 2005 – were setters Ashley Tarutis (Long Beach, Calif./Los Alamitos) and Jamel Nicholas (Gibsonia, Pa./Pine-Richland), who combined for 40 assists.
The Irish never hit less than .300 in any of the three games, yet were able to hold Rutgers under .100 in each frame for a .052 percentage in the match.
Sophomore Megan Fesl (Arlington Heights, Ill./John Hersey) led off the match with a kill from Sciacca’s set, then Sciacca got hot with three kills over a five-point stretch. The early offensive output was a sign of things to come, as Notre Dame finished with a .560 average in the game. Stremick added a huge kill on the slide via Tarutis’ set to give Notre Dame a 9-4 lead, and Nicholas checked into the game to deliver the first of her two aces on the afternoon. Phillips and Stremick teamed for a block (12-5), then Stremick got some help from sophomore Tara Enzweiler (Raleigh, N.C./Cardinal Gibbons) on another rejection to make the count 13-5. Rutgers orchestrated a 5-1 run but ND went on to blow the game open when the Scarlet Knight defense could not handle Stasiuk’s fireball (20-12) and a shotgun up the gut (21-14). Enzweiler found a gap with a kill at 25-15, and followed with a second point one play later. Freshman Stephanie Slatt (Burien, Wash./John F. Kennedy) and Sciacca joined forces for a block to close game one.
Rutgers’ early 1-0 lead in the second game went to the wayside when Phillips and Sciacca registered back-to-back kills. Tarutis put ND ahead for good with a dump (4-3), which started a 7-0 Irish scoring streak. Sophomore Kim Kristoff (Carmel, Ind./Brebeuf Jesuit), who was also celebrating her 20th birthday, added a kill to put the home team up by 10 (25-15).
Stasiuk had eight kills on 12 attempts in the final frame, as ND ended the match with a .385 attack percentage in the last stanza. Rutgers came within two points (12-10), but the Irish ran off with an 8-0 streak late in the game to wrap up their third conference win of the year.
The Irish helped raise $5,850 dollars for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure grassroots network of Northern Indiana in its first-annual Dig for the Cure match, with the total amount going towards breast cancer research.
–ND–