NEWARK, N.J. (January 21, 2017)  – Senior outside hitter Gabe Shankweiler, sophomore outside hitter Dylan DeBoer and freshman outside hitter David Lehman combined for 65 kills as the No. 3 Stevens Institute of Technology men's volleyball team swept No. 11 Rutgers University-Newark (25-19, 25-20, 25-17) and No. 6 University of California, Santa Cruz (25-19, 25-20, 25-21), on the second day of competition at the Golden Dome Invitational Saturday.

Sophomore Jacob Patterson totaled 81 assists on the afternoon and the Ducks attacked ar a .321 percentage over the two games to improve to 3-0.

Rutgers-Newark dropped a pair of matches for the second straight day to fall to 0-4. The Banana Slugs defeated Juniata earlier in the day and dropped a match to the New Jersey Institute of Technology to even their at 3-3.

Volleys and Points

• Opening the day with a match against the host school, the Ducks and Rutgers-Newark were tied at six, with Stevens opening two-point leads and the Scarlet Raiders battling back to tie the set.
• Junior Thomas Burrell buried an attack to reclaim a one-point advantage. An attack error followed to push the Stevens lead to two and Shankweiler buried a Patterson pass to again put the Ducks up two.
• Rutgers-Newark would be unable to recover, only pulling to within one point over the remainder of the match.
• DeBoer buried two Patterson passes over the set's final three points to claim the first set for Stevens.
• The back and forth play carried over into the second set.
• Stevens finally broke free with three consecutive attack errors from Rutgers-Newark.
• Lehman converted a Patterson set to close out the second set at 25-20, his seventh kill of the set.
• In the final set, on the strength of strong serves from senior Alexander Carpenter, the Ducks rallied from an early 3-1 disadvantage to open a six-point lead midway through the final set.
• Rutgers-Newark would attempt to climb back into the match, but sophomore Joshua Hinton recorded one of his three kills at match point to give Stevens the win,
• After a break, Stevens claimed the first two points of the match against UC Santa Cruz on kills by Shankweiler and Lehman.
• The teams would alternate points in the first set until Shankweiler took over midway through the frame, registering two kills and an ace as the Stevens lead grew from 8-7 to 14-8.
• Santa Cruz would attempt to rally, drawing to within one point, but three consecutive attack errors propelled the Ducks to a first set victory.
• Needing to rally, Santa Cruz held a lead in the second set as late as 10-9 before the Ducks again took advantage of sloppy play from the Banana Slugs to take control of the match.
• Six attack errors, a service error, a bad set and a Burrell kill pushed Stevens to an 18-12 lead.
• Two Shankweiler kills closed out the second set.
• The final set mirrored the first two: the teams alternated early points until the Ducks took control of the set on back-to-back errors from Santa Cruz.
• Stevens was able to remain five points ahead throughout the middle portion of the stanza.
• Burrell closed out the second sweep, converting a Patterson set to give Stevens its second victory of the day.

Inside the Numbers

• Stevens continues its opportunistic attacks, only committing 27 attack errors over the two matches.
• The Ducks forced the Scarlet Raiders and the Banana Slugs into 37 combined attack errors.
• Fifteen kills with only two errors propelled Stevens to a .542 attack percentage in the third set against Rutgers-Newark. This is the high-water mark through the first nine sets in 2017.
• Stevens totaled eight services aces on the day and did not allow a single ace to Santa Cruz.

Coach Speak

• "All three of our outsides were amazing against Rutgers-Newark. Between Gabe and Dylan on the left and David on the right side - their hitting percentages were over the top!"
• "I thought Jacob Patterson was awesome in both games with excellent passes to set up our attack."
• "Cagan Friend was also really strong today with some top-notch passes."
• "As a team, we played extremely well in getting through a perfect weekend against these programs that really produce great teams year after year, so it was huge weekend for our program."

Up Next

• The Ducks travel across New Jersey for the Ramapo College Tri-Match on Jan. 28 with games against the hosts and Medaille.
• Live stats and video links for both matches are not yet avaialble but will be posted to StevensDucks.com when made public.

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