So, y’all wanna win a Big East title?
When the 2026 volleyball season started, I had kind of written off the possibility of Marquette hanging a banner for a Big East regular season title. That’s what you do when head coach Tom Mendoza was going to have to lean heavily on a transfer and several freshmen just to get to the NCAA tournament AND Creighton started the year at #13 in the country. When the Bluejays downed preseason #9 Purdue back in August, it definitely felt like this just wasn’t going to be
Marquette’s year, and that’s fine, not all of them have to be bolts out of the blue (and gold).
And then Marquette grew together as a team, and they overcame long term absences from both Keira Schmidt and Emma Parks from the lineup. At the same time, Creighton hit a massive stumble in the middle of the season, losing not just to Marquette at home to break bunches of different winning streaks, but falling to Georgetown for the first time ever. That lands us with both the Golden Eagles and the Bluejays going into the final two matches of the regular season — Seton Hall & St. John’s for MU, Georgetown & Villanova for CU, both teams at home — with each at 12-2.
It doesn’t matter what Creighton does in their contests, as long as Marquette wins their two matches, they’ll be Big East regular season champions for the first time under Tom Mendoza. If Creighton stumbles while Marquette wins, Marquette will be the #1 seed in the conference tournament and outright Big East champion for the first time since 2013. Just take care of business — and stay on track for that NCAA tournament at-large bid! — and hang a banner when the season is over. That’s a hell of an accomplishment just to get to this point for Mendoza and his charges, and now they get the chance, the opportunity — coaches love talking about opportunities, right? — to go out and do something that seemed wildly unlikely three months ago.
Big East Match #15: vs Seton Hall Pirates (10-16, 2-12 Big East)
Date: Friday, November 13, 2026
Time: 7pm Central
Location: McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 29-5 all time against Seton Hall. The Golden Eagles come into the weekend carrying a 20 match winning streak against the Pirates that dates all the way back to a 3-0 win in Milwaukee in 2015.
Hey, don’t take the downside of that 2-12 Big East record! Think about it this way: Seton Hall has won two of their last six contests! That’s way better than their 0-8 start to conference play. Sure, they’re already eliminated from the conference tournament because they’re seven games behind DePaul and St. John’s in the loss column, but at least they made UConn miserable about their season by getting a win at Walsh Gym last Friday.
Loss #8 of Big East play was Marquette’s visit to South Orange, and that was a 3-0 sweep. It wasn’t a 100% glorious victory by the Golden Eagles, as the third set was close all the way and even tied at 21 all. It would have been a massive let down to slide to a fourth set after how smoothly the first two frames went, but Marquette avoided that problem. Can Marquette reliably lean back on knowing they’re going to hit .346 against the Pirates again here? Probably not.
MU probably also needs to be a little bit careful about what they’re allowing to SHU’s top attackers. Alondra Villanueva hit .286 against Marquette in the first meeting and Maddy Loiselle hit .263. That’s not amazing, but it’s perfectly acceptable production, especially from a team that’s staring a last place finish in the face here. Villanueva is hitting just .161 on the season, so that was an above average performance for her. Not what you want to see if you’re Marquette’s coaching staff, but there’s ways to work around that.
Seton Hall was without Daria Safian in the first meeting, and missing people from the lineup has been a problem all year for the Pirates. They have just two players who have appeared in every match and only one of them — setter Gwen Adler — has played in every set. Safian averages 2.63 kills per set on .209 hitting when she’s in the lineup, and she had double digit kills in both of SHU’s matches last weekend. That’s an extra option for them that Marquette is going to have to take into account this time around.
Big East Match #16: vs St. John’s Red Storm (19-8, 9-5 Big East)
Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026
Time: 5pm Central
Location: McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 30-9 all time against St. John’s. The Golden Eagles have taken both sides of the season set in each of the past two years and can make that three years in a row after winning in New York earlier this season. The series has been heavily tilted towards MU ever since St. John’s won four of the first five meetings between 2005 and 2009.
A lot about St. John’s attitude for this game is going to be decided when they walk off the court in Chicago on Friday night. A glance at the Big East’s Scenario Central lets us know that with both the Red Storm and the Blue Demons tied at 9-5 right now, whichever team wins on Friday will clinch a conference tournament berth. If that’s St. John’s, then they come into Saturday with nothing on the line other than seeding where a win means they likely get Marquette in the Big East semifinals and a loss means they likely get Creighton. If it’s DePaul coming out ahead on Friday, then the Red Storm will need a win over a Marquette team probably playing for a Big East title or a loss by Xavier in either of their two weekend matches to get into the field. Of course, they’ll know if they got that Xavier loss to UConn on Friday by the time we get to Saturday, so that adds a wrinkle to things.
Marquette didn’t exactly get through St. John’s easily in the first meeting this season. The second set was a roll through, 25-14, but MU needed a 5-0 closing run to win the first 25-19. They were up 14-8 in the third before giving up an 11-5 run the other way to tie it at 19. It was tied at 24 as well, and MU got kills from Tani Juric and Emma Parks to wrap it up and dodge a fourth set, but #1 and #3 were essentially razor thin margins. Maybe MU wins in 4, maybe they get it done in 5 if it gets there, but this match is solid evidence in the category of “sweep does not mean one-sided.”
Part of the reason why Marquette did win the match is because they provoked wretched outings from STJ’s top attackers. Carola Tesoro is second in the Big East in kills this season to only MU’s Carson Tyler, and she’s the only other player averaging more than 3.6 kills per set. Tesoro has dropped way back in Big East action, and stuff like “8 kills and 9 errors against Marquette” is a big example as to how and why. Lejla Hadziredzepovic was at 7 kills and 7 errors against Marquette even with the kills that prompted the 24-all tie in set three. That’s a net negative from the two women combining for 58 of your 104 swings in the match, and honestly, at that point, it’s impressive that they gave MU so many problems in two-thirds of the match. It’s probably unlikely that they’re both that bad again, so the Golden Eagles are going to have to find another way to win.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
