I’m fascinated by the idea of what Marquette and Illinois are doing this weekend.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, Marquette and Illinois are doing a thing I don’t remember seeing the Golden Eagles do before: They’re playing a home-and-home weekend series, one match in Milwaukee, one match on the road, both against the same team. Non-conference play usually takes the shape of “go to a place, play two or three matches with one against the host team.” That’s what Marquette has done the past
two weekends, even with the Dayton/Wright State situation being technically two road contests, but they were still in the same metro area.
This is different. This is two teams in relative close proximity to each other, both with an eye on the NCAA tournament, electing to play a home game and a road game against each other and kind of cheating the RPI system along the way. Marquette finds themselves in a situation where they have a young team that’s still coming together at this point of the year, but the Golden Eagles have an NCAA tournament streak to maintain. Getting a pair of contests against a Big Ten opponent, one home and one road, will pay off in the computer numbers when we get to the end of November. Illinois hasn’t made the field of 64 since 2021, but part of that is merely going through the meat grinder that is the Big Ten. They haven’t finished better than 11-9 in the league since that NCAA bid, and going home-and-home with Marquette is an interesting way for the Illini to help their non-conference strength of schedule out.
I am curious about how MU head coach Tom Mendoza and Illinois head coach Chris Tamas came together on this idea. It’s obvious that the idea of pulling eyeballs to your program is part of it, after all, FS1 is picking up Friday night’s broadcast in Milwaukee. I would like to know what opportunities each team passed on to do this. Who invited Marquette/Illinois to which event and what set of matches, and why did Mendoza/Tamas think this was better for them? Is it as simple as both were trying to organize a home event and couldn’t get enough of a competitive situation together to make it make sense, and they ultimately gave up and just decided to play each other twice?
It doesn’t hurt that both teams come into the weekend with a season so far that says it would be incredibly useful to win both matches. Marquette has taken on two top five losses, which isn’t really that much of a problem other than it’s two losses in their first five matches. MU’s other loss was to Dayton, and the Flyers have spent the intervening time diminishing the upside of losing to UD on the road. They took losses to Ball State and Wright State in WSU’s gym last weekend to give them three defeats in their last four matches — nothing wrong about losing at #6 Louisville — but an otherwise whatever loss to Dayton is slightly more problematic for MU’s NCAA profile right now.
Meanwhile, Illinois opened the year with a five set loss to Cincinnati, and the Bearcats following that up with losses to Santa Clara and Michigan isn’t great for the Illini. A road loss to #22 Tennessee isn’t that big of a deal, but if you’re an NCAA hopeful, you’d like to be able to stun a team in the back end of the top 25. Wins over McNeese and Rice aren’t jumping off the page at you, nor is their Wednesday night victory over Lindenwood.
A pair of wins in both directions would mean an awful lot for both teams…. and a pair of losses would be pretty devastating, too.
Match #6: vs Illinois Fighting Illini (4-2)
Date: Friday, September 11, 2026
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Television: FS1
Streaming: FoxSports.com/live or the Fox Sports app
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Match #7: at Illinois Fighting Illini (4-2)
Date: Sunday, September 13, 2026
Time: 3pm Central
Location: Huff Hall, Champaign, Illinois
Streaming: B1G+, which will set you back $13 for a month of access
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Marquette is 1-4 all time against Illinois. As luck would have it, the win is in the most recent meeting, with the Golden Eagles toppling the #25 ranked Illini back in September 2022. The two teams have met three times in the NCAA tournament, including in 2018, Marquette’s first ever Sweet 16 appearance.
The Illini picked up a 3-0 win over Lindenwood on Wednesday to move to 4-2 on the year and also snag their third straight victory after their 1-2 start to the season. Paityn Chapman was the leading attacker for the squad in that one with 11 kills, and she hit .308 to get there. That’s right in line with Illinois’ overall profile this season, as Chapman leads the team with 3.75 kills per set, and she’s hitting .306 through 20 sets. Taylor de Boer and Alyssa Aguayo are both chipping in over 2.80 kills/set, and both are hitting over .300, too. That’s a nice mix of offensive weapons for the Illini, and with Chapman and de Boer at 6’3” and 6’4” respectively, that gives them a little bit of a size advantage here.
Kenna Phelan is your setter, averaging 9.45 assists right now. She’s hitting .385 on the roughly once a set that she does send one over the net, so that’s something that MU is going to have to watch out for as both matches go along. Talita Goncalves anchors the defense with 3.05 digs per set, but the Illini get more than two per frame from both Chapman and Phelan as they play six rotations. 6’0” Ukrainian middle blocker Kristina is just barely short of a block per set and Chapman helps out there as well to the tune of 0.70/set.
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