Back in late September and early October, the direction of the chase at the top of the Big East volleyball standings got flipped around when Marquette took a 3-2 loss at DePaul on Wednesday night and then went down to Omaha and pulled a 3-2 win out against Creighton. That, combined with Creighton’s loss to Georgetown down the road, left Marquette alone in first place in the Big East with DePaul and Creighton one game back.
Up until now.
That spot got blown up on Thursday when the Golden Eagles took
a 3-2 loss (21-25, 25-19, 25-17, 24-26, 14-16) at home to Creighton, giving both the Golden Eagles and the Bluejays a five set road victory against the other side. That moved everyone involved into a three-way tie for the moment, and then Creighton beat DePaul, 3-1, on Friday night, dropping the Blue Demons down to third place and setting up an interesting contest on Sunday when the Blue Demons came north to the McGuire Center. Marquette came out the victor there, sweeping DePaul on scores of 25-16, 25-18, and 25-21, and even that third set ended up being lopsided in the back end of it.
That combination of results has Marquette and Creighton tied for first place in the Big East at 10-2 with four matches each left to play, while DePaul stays in third after their fourth loss in conference action. St. John’s and Xavier are one game behind the Blue Demons at 7-5, so there’s a lot left to be decided over the final two weeks/four matches of the regular season.
As you can see from the set scores, Marquette had Creighton dead to rights at the Al. After dropping the first set because the Jays ran wild with a 10-4 run in the middle-ish section, Marquette controlled the next two sets. A 6-2 run late in the first frame somewhat set the stage for that, and the Bluejays started to look shaky late in the second set as MU went up 21-15. Creighton started putting balls into the pins regularly and all of a sudden MU was up 18-11 in the third. They kind of traded points the rest of the way, and that’s all the Golden Eagles needed to do to go up 2-1.
In the fourth, Marquette flipped an early three point Bluejays lead to a two point edge in their direction before Creighton could even blink. The visitors stayed with it, and dragged the margin out to 18-15 favoring the Jays. Marquette came roaring back from that to lead 21-20, and it would have been really neat if they could have made that work to finish up. Nope. 6-3 Creighton the rest of the way, Marquette prolonged it with Carson Tyler fending off a set point, but kills from Abbey Hayes and Eloise Brandewie knotted the match at 2 sets each.
The fifth set was close. Neither side was ever up more than two, and that was mostly in the early going anyway. Marquette last led at 10-9, and a kill from Emma Parks tied it at 11. 3-1 Jays got them to match point on a kill by Hayes, but the Golden Eagles answered back with kills from Parks and Tyler to knot it at 14. This could have gone in either direction. I want to be clear about that.
Kill by Trinity Shadd-Ceres, block by Ayden Ames and Katie Dalton on Tyler, 16-14, Bluejays win it and get the tie in the season series.
No one had a great night for Marquette. Carson Tyler led with 22 kills, but she hit just .175. Tani Juric had 19 kills and hit .250, which would be helpful on a normal night. Pair that with a .000 on 22 swings from Caydence Doolan, an .048 on 21 swings by Molly Welge, and a .167 on 18 attempts by Emma Parks, and you see what the problem was here. I do want to shout out Luanna Markus who had 24 digs to go with her 43 assists, because that is ridiculous. I kept seeing those digs numbers growing on the scoreboard and I just presumed the thing got a wire crossed between #3 Markus and #2 Emi Juric, who had 24 digs as MU’s libero on the night. I also want to shoutout Julia Stanev, who had an absolutely ridiculous two solo blocks and seven assisted blocks on the night as the Golden Eagles racked up 16 points on rejections of Creighton attacks alone.
I do want to note that Creighton hit .133 as a team here, so they were not great and that’s why Marquette absolutely had a chance to end this match in the fourth and win in the fifth. A big component of what happened here as opposed to the result we saw in Omaha was the utility of Trinity Shadd-Ceres, who was limited in the first meeting. Here she led Creighton in attacks and had a team high 16 kills on .173 hitting. You could say that MU did a fair enough job limiting her effectiveness as the top attacker… but also Creighton won when they lost without her, so maybe not?
How about some highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FS1?
The first time around through this set of opponents, Marquette lost in five sets to DePaul, which created a lot of trepidation for the visit to Nebraska to see Creighton. That ended up working out okay, as it turns out, but it wasn’t great at the time. Something similar happened here where Marquette lost a nailbiter to Creighton then had to host DePaul a few days later. The Blue Demons came in knowing they were capable of beating Marquette, and that set the stage for Sunday’s events.
I don’t know what head coach Tom Mendoza may or may not have said to his charges heading into this one, but it certainly looked like Marquette had absolutely zero intent of coming anywhere close to losing to the Blue Demons again. The Golden Eagles hit .406 as a team while never hitting worse than .375 in any set, and they held DePaul under .190 in all three sets for a final hitting percentage of .133.
Marquette went up 5-0 in the first set in an omen of what was to come. DePaul was able to string some points together and get back within three here and there early, but four straight for Marquette made it 23-15, and then Carson Tyler closed it out on her way to 17 kills on .438 hitting. It took MU a second to get it in gear for the second set, but a 7-0 run capped by a block by Molly Welge and Emma Parks tipped this thing over. 9-4 MU at that point, then 13-7, 16-10, and you get the idea. Luanna Markus gets the 25th point with a kill in this one, and Marquette went up 2-0 pretty quickly.
Set 3 was not a picnic. Perhaps it goes into the record books as one of those “coaches are thrilled when the team wins but it’s ugly, because now they have lots of material for practice” things. 10-4 DePaul on a setting error by Luanna Markus, and it looked like the Golden Eagles might be in trouble. MU couldn’t get it closer than three, and a kill from Kendall Timme made it 18-12. Uh oh.
But Marquette won, 25-21. Do the math. 13-3. Heck, it was a 9-2 Marquette run to take a 21-20 lead. DePaul misfired for four of those 13 Marquette points, not a block, just an old fashioned didn’t keep it inbounds attacking error. That absolutely helped Marquette’s dominance down the stretch, up to and including scoring the final four points of the match out of a 21-21 tie and prevent this from getting dragged into a fourth frame.
Carson Tyler was the only one to get to double digit kills here, but that’s more of a product of her terminating at a high level mixed with this going as a 3-0 sweep. But: Emma Parks hit .421, Tani Juric hit .333, Molly Welge hit .357. Pretty much the opposite of what we saw against Creighton, and you see what the result was. Worth mentioning: No Caydence Doolan at all, but I presume that’s more about the leg sleeve she’s been wearing lately than it is about her five kill/five error performance against Creighton and needing a reset.
In the preview for the weekend, I pointed out that Marquette couldn’t slow down Isabela Salomon Tavares or Jade Dudley-Epps in the first meeting. Their output here? 5 kills and five errors on 21 attempts for .000 hitting for Tavares, 9/4/.217 for Dudley-Epps. Big difference, and big difference on the final result.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?
Up Next: One last weekend on the road in the regular season awaits the Golden Eagles. On Friday, November 6, they’ll visit Villanova for a 4pm Central time start, and they’ll be in Washington, D.C., 25 hours later to face Georgetown. Both matches will be streamed live on ESPN+. The Wildcats are at the far edge of contention for the Big East tournament at 5-7 in conference play after losing to UConn and Providence this weekend, while the Hoyas are one game back at 4-8 and riding a four match losing streak since beating Creighton.
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