Somewhere, a monkey’s paw curled a finger inwards when I noted that Marquette volleyball would be 5-5 headed into Big East play if they went 2-1 this weekend.
That’s what Marquette did in terms of matches in their three contests against #6 Wisconsin, St. Thomas, and Milwaukee. However, their set win/loss record for the three matches sits at 7-5 because Marquette took the first set from a top 10 ranked Badgers team before losing in four sets and also lost the first two sets to St. Thomas on Saturday
afternoon before figuring out a way to reverse sweep the Tommies. Somehow, Marquette just swept the Panthers easily even though Milwaukee came in with a better record on the season than UST, but perhaps that’s because they had a fire still raging on Sunday afternoon after the events of Saturday.
There’s not much to say about how the Wisconsin match went. Marquette won the first set 25-22 as neither team cleared .200 hitting and MU just made enough plays after UW tied the frame at 21 late. The Golden Eagles repeated their .194 hitting in the second, but Wisconsin caught fire for .552 and ran away with that one. They just kind of lost touch with the Badgers in the middle of each of the third and fourth set and ended up with losses in each one. Even though the Golden Eagles didn’t hit even .100 in either one, I wouldn’t even say they were playing poorly, and the hitting percentage wasn’t because of errors. They had seven in the first set and still nearly hit .200, while having six and five in #3 and #4 respectively. The Badgers were just not letting the ball get to the ground. On top of that, the Big Ten Network announcing crew spent the last stretch of the match praising Marquette’s grit and hustle and defensive tenacity even while Wisconsin was calmly bodying MU out of the Field House.
It didn’t help that Wisconsin’s Decelise Champion ran wild in her third ever collegiate match. That’s a combination of “player very good” and “MU has very little tape on UW with her” turning into 20 kills and .441 hitting.
At the end of the day, it was the #6 team in the country running over a team nowhere close to the AVCA top 25, one that’s relying on multiple freshmen to carry the workload.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Big Ten Network?
That takes us to Saturday when it’s not even that Marquette couldn’t get the car out of first gear in the first two sets, it’s that they didn’t even have the keys with them to even try to start the car, and honestly, it looked like they forgot where they parked, anyway.
Marquette gave up a 7-1 run early in the first set to St. Thomas, and it would seem that the experience emboldened the Tommies for the rest of the afternoon. That burst left the first set going back and forth, and MU probably could have benefitted from finishing UST after Carson Tyler put the Golden Eagles up 24-23. They did not, then MU fended off set point twice before Allie Beers got stuffed for the 28-26 Tommies win. This was not a pleasant set of volleyball with St. Thomas hitting .178 and Marquette hitting .100, but this would be an experience that would continue as the afternoon went along.
The second set was a bunch of back and forth for a good long while, pretty much all the way through to 18-18. UST scored the next two and five of the next six, which pretty much ended Marquette’s chances of pulling even. One of those was three Golden Eagles watching as a ball dropped in between them, and I suspect that freshman setter Luanna Markus at the very least thought a curse word in her native Portuguese. That’s what the look on her face said at least. Addie Schmotzer dropped a kill on the Golden Eagles for the 25-21 set and the 2-0 lead, and things were officially over in “this is very bad” town.
This seems like an excellent spot to mention that Keira Schmidt started this match for Marquette but ultimately only played in two sets. Julia Stanev hadn’t played at all since the loss to Dayton in the second match of the year, but here she was, appearing in the last four sets of this one. Emma Parks was also nearly completely missing here after playing in all four sets against Wisconsin and getting 23 swings at the net. She played in just one set and had that giant black heating pad on her midsection. This would appear to be part benching and part injury concern, but still very important to keep an eye on.
Things did not get better in the third set as it just kept on being even and/or back and forth between the two teams. A kill by Anya Schmidt had St. Thomas up 18-16, and things were officially looking real bad for Marquette, particularly since they had just pulled even at 16. A block from Stanev and Carson Tyler ended up as the trigger for a 6-0 Marquette run and suddenly they were up 22-18. Is that a big enough lead to hold? Turns out, yes, as MU traded points with the Tommies before Tyler scored a kill and Molly Welge got a solo stuff to extend the match at least one more set.
That push to the end did not truly get Marquette running, as the fourth set was more back and forth again. Ties, over and over again, all the way up to 17-all. A service error by the Tommies, a block from Stanev and Tani Juric, a kill by Tyler, a misfire by UST, and another kill from Tyler… and once again, 22-18. Once again, that was enough of a lead to hang on to late in a set, and when Maddy Benka hit the pin on an attack, Marquette had won, 25-19, and forced this along to a fifth set.
FINALLY, Marquette showed signs of fury early and went out to an 8-3 lead. The Tommies edged back towards the Golden Eagles, and after a useful timeout up 9-6, Marquette got the next two points on a service error and a block by Welge and Juric. 11-6. Trading points was going to work here, and they did that until Caydence Doolan, wrapping up a 17 kill/.333 hitting day, ended the match and finished the reverse sweep.
Doolan, as mentioned, was great, to the point of wondering why we didn’t see her against Wright State or South Florida or either match against Illinois, or barely at all against Stanford or Wisconsin. Carson Tyler was terrific as MU leaned on her booming attacks, either at the net, from the back row, or from the service stripe, as she finished with 28 kills on .297, and added 14 digs, three aces, and four assisted blocks. Molly Welge (8/.316) was ultimately fine, as was Tani Juric (8/.231), but those are five set numbers. It definitely did not look that good all the way good for them, and Markus, Schmidt, and Parks were all in negatives.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?
And so, that brought us to Sunday and a match against Milwaukee, where the Panthers had been on a five match winning streak as recently as Friday morning before losing at Wisconsin and then dropping a five setter to Western Michigan at home on Saturday. UWM had beaten St. Thomas 3-1 up in Minnesota back on September 5th, so what did that mean for Marquette here?
It meant that head coach Tom Mendoza’s post game speech to the team on Saturday and pregame speech on Sunday REALLY worked, as MU hit over .300 in all three sets and held Milwaukee under .100 in all three sets. Milwaukee never scored more points in any of the three sets than the 15 they managed in the opener, and that was that, 3-0 Marquette wins.
Tom Mendoza went deeeeep into his bench here, to the point of freshman opposite hitter Aubrey Hicks making her collegiate debut with two kills on four swings and she played in all three sets. He did not go deep enough into the bench to get Keira Schmidt onto the court, although it’s probably worth remembering that she was in a walking boot during the preseason. Carson Tyler still led in kills with 12 and she hit .375 while trailing only Emi Juric (13) on the digs chart with seven.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?
Up Next: Big East play! Marquette will hit the road for their first two league matches next weekend, which will actually be the first two of four straight on the road for the Golden Eagles. First up is UConn at 5pm Central on Friday, September 25, then it’s off to Rhode Island to face Providence at 2pm Central the very next day. It would appear that both programs are hiding their matches behind their proprietary streaming services, to which I say: Extreme loser behavior. We have an ESPN+ contract for a reason, people. I can’t help but notice that Providence’s other home Big East matches are on ESPN+ but this one isn’t. SUSPICIOUS, FRIARS. UConn is 7-6 this season after beating Rhode Island on Sunday, while Providence is 8-3 after losing in five sets to Sacred Heart on Saturday.
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