Well, here’s something fun.
Marquette has a pivotal Big East match to play. Not just in the standings because it’s still a little bit early in Big East play and the Golden Eagles haven’t finished their first pass through the league yet, but in big picture/NCAA tournament ways, too.
Through matches played on this past Sunday, Xavier is at #33 in the RPI…. which actually has the Musketeers one spot ahead of the Golden Eagles right now. Believe it or not, beating Xavier would be Marquette’s best win of the season,
as Florida’s stumbles since losing to Marquette in Milwaukee has dipped them down to #38 in the RPI. Of course, who knows if that would last past this weekend if the Golden Eagles were to get the W, but you don’t look down on a chance to build your NCAA tournament resume in Big East play, not with four non-Marquette teams in the top 60 of the RPI and no one else in the top 140….. and three teams somewhere south of 200.
This is also an important match for the Big East standings, as Xavier and Marquette both come into Friday night at 5-1 in the league. Both teams have only suffered a loss to Creighton to this point of the schedule, so getting a leg up on the Musketeers now, at home, could end up being a big deal for MU. We can’t help but notice that the regular season finale is a visit to Cincinnati to play the Musketeers, and while coaching staffs love to tell you that they only focus on the one match that’s right in front of them, it would definitely be a good idea to play the final match of the year with an eye on finishing the season sweep of Xavier instead of needing to split the series. Who knows what the standings will look like by the time we get to mid-November, so it’s best to take advantage of what the schedule gives you.
We should also gesture in the general direction of taking Butler seriously. As you’ll see in the Bulldog-specific portion of this preview, there’s reasons to be concerned about what they bring to the table. As such, it’s important for Marquette to approach that match with the necessary mindset to get that win, no matter what does or does not happen against Xavier. I can’t help but think about the fact that Marquette dropped sets last weekend to teams that are collectively 12-26 on the year and 2-12 in Big East play right now. I came to terms with the fact that this was going to be a season of adjustments and ups and downs for the Golden Eagles between heavy roster turnover that was going to happen even before Ryan Theis left for the Florida job, but my thought was that maaaaaaybe Marquette’s going to lose to the teams that end up in third or fourth in the Big East this year. If you keep letting teams like St. John’s and Seton Hall hang around, one of them is going to bite you in the ankles eventually. Don’t do that at home against Butler, and especially if Xavier prevails on Friday.
Big East Match #7: vs Xavier Musketeers (16-2, 5-1 Big East)
Date: Friday, October 17, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 22-9 all time against Xavier. The series went 2-2 before MU was officially a part of Division 1 in 1986, so that’s 20-7 since then. Marquette has won 12 straight meetings against the Musketeers, dating back to XU winning in Cincinnati and again in Indianapolis in the 2016 Big East tournament.
We have to start with this part: Xavier doesn’t have a quality win on the books. The closest that they come is a road win against RPI #52 Villanova that they picked up in five sets. They lost the first set in extra points, went up 2-1, including a 25-16 third set, flubbed a 20-17 lead and got forced to a fifth set, and then let the Wildcats fend off FOUR match points before finally securing what is currently their best win of the season. Their only other two top 100 wins this season are against #55 UConn and #98 Eastern Kentucky, both in four sets, both at home.
What the Musketeers do not have is anything resembling even a questionable loss. They fell in three sets at Creighton (understandable) and lost a crosstown rivalry match at RPI #21 Cincinnati, and while the Bearcats aren’t tearing it up this season at 10-6 right now, they also essentially haven’t played anyone below #200 in the RPI to put that record together. I’ll let XU decide how they feel about being Cincinnati’s best win on the season at the moment.
Emma Grace is Xavier’s top offensive weapon, sitting at #9 in the Big East with 3.42 kills per set. She’s hitting .244, which is respectable enough, and roughly speaking, she’s going to get you a service ace once per match, too. Anna Taylor and Charlotte Moriarty give Xavier options at 2.47 and 2.35 kills per set respectively, although if I were head coach Christy Pfeffenberger, I’d lean a little bit towards Taylor, the redshirt senior, instead of Moriarty, the sophomore. Not for seniority reasons or anything really, just because Taylor has more than 100 fewer attacks on the year while hitting .304….. and Moriarty is hitting .187. It’s math!
I think Macy Hatkevich is doing a better job setting than her 8.85 assists per frame average is telling us. She has played in all but one set this season and has started all but one match. She’s not sharing time on the way to the fifth best assists average in the Big East, because the other two women with more than two assists per set have played in less than 20 of XU’s 69 sets. This is not a rotation, but I think we’re getting a thing where Hatkevich plays and then ends up subbing out to wrap up a blowout — 17 assists against Providence last time out with set wins of 25-16 and 25-12, for example — and thus that takes a little bit of the air out of her average.
Marquette has to watch out for Margo Kemp and McKinley Boehm in this match. Boehm has played in every set this season while Kemp has missed just one, and both women average more than a block per set. They rank #3 and #7 in the Big East in that department, and Kemp’s 1.15/set combines with her 2.01 kills/set on .309 hitting to give her the second best points per set average on the team behind Emma Grace.
Big East Match #8: vs Butler Bulldogs (8-11, 1-5 Big East)
Date: Saturday, October 18, 2025
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Marquette is 22-9 all time against Butler. The Golden Eagles head into this road trip riding a seven match winning streak against the Bulldogs, including a pair of sweeps last season, and MU hasn’t lost at home to Butler since 2017.
Butler has six sub-100 RPI losses on the year. 0-5 against top 60 opponents, sure, whatever, things happen, yeah, that’s also their record against the top 100 too, okay, got it. No one’s perfect. The bummer of their season? They were 4-1 with a road loss to Iowa to start the year. The Bulldogs are 4-10 since then, including their five worst losses of the season. Big East play has not been kind to them, partially because their non-conference schedule didn’t really do much to prepare them to play top 60 competition, which accounts for four of their five losses in the league so far. The other one is at #153 Georgetown, and the Hoyas kind of dismantled the Bulldogs other than the one frame where BU hit .467.
While Butler might have notable troubles as a team, they’ve still got some people who can do some damage. Alaleh Tolliver has the third best kills average in the Big East behind Marquette’s Natalie Ring and Creighton’s Ava Martin, putting up just barely short of four kills per set on .226 hitting. Butler does spread out the offense a bit with Elise Ward joining Tolliver by having more than 600 swings on the season. The problem is that Ward is hitting just .172 to get to 2.87 kills per set. Both women are likely to get you a service ace during a match at 0.40 per set, but it looks like they might gamble a little bit at the stripe since they have more errors than aces.
Kaylee Finnegan is third in the Big East in assists per set behind — you can guess this — Creighton’s Annalea Maeder and Marquette’s Isabela Haggard, which would normally make you think “oh, this offense has some juice!” The evidence is there with Tolliver and Finnegan, I suppose, but Butler has the second worst team hitting percentage in the league at .198. On the defensive side, Lauren Evans is third in the league in digs at 4.30/set and Zoe McDonald keeps the Bulldogs respectable at the net with 0.98 block/set.
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