I am planning on attending Friday and Saturday’s Marquette volleyball matches in person.
I am begging the Golden Eagles to not go to extra points or five sets at all this weekend.
Marquette went to five sets in all three of their opening weekend matches, coming away with wins against Hawaii and Utah State, while ending up with a loss to San Diego sandwiched in the middle. Big Picture: None of this is a problem,
as those three teams are favored to win the Big West, the Mountain West, and the West Coast Conference this season. All three should be pretty good at worst and NCAA tournament contenders if the preseason projections shake out. Heck, Hawaii and San Diego were earning preseason AVCA top 25 votes just like Marquette, so all in all, it’s not too surprising that everything was so even all weekend long.
Oh, right, the extra points thing. Marquette played 15 sets in Honolulu this past weekend. Three of the 15 went to extra points. That’s generally speaking a lot, and MU played a lot of extra point volleyball when they went past the usual winning total. Two of the three extra sets came in the Hawaii match, and Marquette won the third frame there by a score of 34-32. In a “first to 25, win by 2” sport, getting to 34 is A LOT of extra volleyball, made all the more crazy because 1) Marquette was attempting to prolong a match they were already trailing 0-2 and 2) Marquette had to fend off match point — not set point, MATCH point — six times in that third set. The third time they went to extras? 20-18 in the fifth and final set of the weekend against Utah State, and remember: Fifth sets are “play to 15.” Again: That’s a LOT of high leverage volleyball.
GOOD NEWS: Marquette’s players have a lot of stress inoculation after their weekend in the Pacific Ocean, and that might make them a better volleyball team as the season goes along.
BAD NEWS: I don’t have any of that stress inoculation because 1) the Hawaii match started at 1am Central time and 2) the Utah State match wasn’t streamed at all. I didn’t see any of it as a result and only learned about it after the fact. Please, Marquette, I am asking you very nicely: Do not strain my precious cardiovascular system this weekend. Win 25-23 all the way through, that’s fine! That’s way less stressful than 34-32!
Thank you in advance.
Oh, P.S.: Please beat Dayton because I do not like that university. Also they are ranked and beating them might push MU into the rankings, but also the first thing.
Match #4: vs RV Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (2-1)
Date: Friday, September 5, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 3-2 all time against Western Kentucky. WKU won the first meeting in 2004, Marquette won the next two, including the 2011 match in the first round of the NCAA tournament. That one was was 1) MU’s first ever NCAA tournament match and 2) MU’s first ever win over a ranked team. The Golden Eagles bounced back from down 2-1 to beat the Hilltoppers in five sets last season.
Things started about as expected for Western Kentucky this season, getting sweeps of Wright State and Loyola-Chicago at home in their first two matches. The last match of the WKU Invitational was against Drake, and the Bulldogs recorded their first win of the season by knocking off the Hilltoppers in five sets. Western Kentucky won the first set easily, lost the second set in extra points, won the third 25-18, then got squeezed 25-21 in a fourth set that Drake led pretty much the whole time. The fifth set turned as Drake, which was picked to finish third in the Missouri Valley Conference, turned a 5-4 WKU lead to a 13-6 Bulldogs advantage, and that was pretty much that. It’s really not what you want in your opening weekend, especially not at home, especially not when you’re earning preseason top 25 votes, and not when you’re the favorite to win Conference USA.
Kaira Knox was Western Kentucky’s top attacker for the opening weekend of the season, both in total attacks (101) and in kills average. She went for a whopping 4.18/set through the first 11 frames of the 2025 campaign, and the 5’9” freshman from Tennessee hit .257, too. Is that a super amazing hitting percentage? Maybe not, but you can make that work from your leading attacker. Preseason all-CUSA outside hitter Alivia Skidmore was second best in kills at 2.82/set, but she only hit .186. After hitting .263 as a freshman last year, she’s bound to have better days as the season goes along.
Abby Schaefer was the top defender for WKU with 3.27 digs/set while playing in all 11 sets. That’s a little bit above her career average and better than she did in 2024, so perhaps that right about on target for what to expect from the senior from Kentucky. Gabby Weihe gets credit for being Western Kentucky’s top blocker after averaging 1.09/set over the weekend, but we have to be curious about Izzy Van De Wiele. The junior middle hitter from Iowa was a preseason all-CUSA honoree, but she played just one set against Wright State back on Friday and didn’t appear again. She was great, using her 6’5” frame to get two solo blocks before she went out with a sprained ankle. If she’s healthy enough for Friday night, that’s big for WKU, and vice versa if she’s not.
Match #5: vs #25 Dayton Flyers (2-1)
Date: Saturday, September 5, 2025
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 10-22 all time against Dayton, although that record goes to 9-18 if you keep it to since MU moved to Division 1. The Golden Eagles have won two straight in the series after beating the Flyers 3-1 last year in an event hosted by Western Kentucky.
Dayton started off the year at #24 in the preseason AVCA poll, which does obviously present the question of “how are they still ranked if they suffered a loss in the opening weekend?” That’s a simple one: They lost in four sets to #23 Utah in the Utes’ building. That barely counts as a loss relative to poll rankings in my view. Now, if you want to chat about the Flyers dropping the third set to Lafayette in their opener or the first set in a 3-1 win over Washington State following the loss to Utah, well, that seems fair. Lafayette was picked to finish eighth in the nine team Patriot League this year, while Wazzu landed in a tie for fourth in the West Coast Conference preseason poll. Those feel like matches that a top 25 ranked team should get through a little bit cleaner, but hey, first weekend of the season, it was a short turnaround to the WSU match at 3pm after starting at 9pm vs the Utes, it’s at altitude, you still won, etc.
Kamryn Hunt took the most attacks for Dayton in the opening weekend, turning her 117 swings into 31 kills and a 2.58 average. You can do some rough math in your head: Yep, she only hit .128. Corrie Anderson averaged 3.10 off the bench for the Flyers, but she didn’t play in two sets and she only hit .122. For what it’s worth, the two sets she missed were against Utah before she played all four against Washington State, so I think we should expect to see her in Milwaukee.
Melina Schrader did the setting for Dayton, averaging 9.89 through the first weekend. It’s worth noting that 1) she’s a freshman and 2) she only played one set against Utah. Viktoria Wahlgren led the Flyers in assists in that match, but didn’t record an assist at all in the other two matches of the weekend. Karissa Kaminski was all over the floor to the tune of 4.50 digs/set, and Abbie Cresse was racking up rejections at a 1.25/set clip.
Match #6: vs Buffalo Bulls (2-1)
Date: Sunday, September 7, 2025
Time: Noon Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Buffalo.
By default, Buffalo is the least of the three teams that Marquette will see this weekend just because they’re not earning top 25 votes, either in the preseason poll or right now. However, the Bulls are 2-1 just like Marquette as well as the other two teams coming to Milwaukee, and they did get a 3-2 win over Rutgers to wrap up their weekend. That balances out their 0-3 home loss to Liberty to start the season and that’s perhaps confusing after Buffalo got a 3-0 exhibition win over Syracuse. I’m just saying: Liberty is picked to finish sixth in Conference USA, while Buffalo is projected at fifth in the MAC.
Manoela Forlin sits atop the stat sheet after one weekend of the season, averaging 3.67 kills per set and hitting just barely under .300. That’s pretty great for the 6’2” Brazilian junior outside hitter, since she hit .144 last season. Emerson Matthews is #2 in kills average, but she edges out Forlin by two swing attempts, 96-94. We’ll see who has the edge going forward, as Matthews is a freshman this year and the 5’11” Canadian hit just .167 this past weekend.
Freshman Maddie Mitchell is Buffalo’s primary setter, starting twice and playing in all 12 sets. She averaged 8.75 assists over the first three matches, but I presume sophomore Ashley Ballou’s five sets worth of 4.00 assists/set to start the year is messing with Mitchell’s numbers. Ballou didn’t play at all against Rutgers, and Mitchell had 46 assists in that five set win.
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