Marquette has seven matches to prepare for a de facto Big East title contest.
Seven matches between now and November 1 when they wind their way into Omaha to face Creighton for the back half of this years’s home-and-home series. The goal for the Golden Eagles has to be to put themselves in position to play for a share of that regular season title. Six matches against the six teams they haven’t played yet in league action, then one against DePaul. Four on the road, including two this weekend, with
the middle two at home. Three chances to do damage against the three teams currently tied with MU for second place in the league at 2-0.
That’s what the next few weeks looks at in terms of the Big East standings. There’s also the NCAA tournament profile to consider. Without being mean to anyone and just merely reading what the RPI sheet says: Marquette can not afford to lose this weekend, on the road or not. You want an at-large bid? Gotta go visit two sub-190 RPI teams and win. The end, full stop. Winning might not noticeably help Marquette move up from their #34 spot in the RPI as of Monday morning, but improving by 0.01 is provably better than falling by 0.10 if you lose, and that’s what’s on the line here. There’s only so much they can do about their Big East schedule, and it’s best if they don’t import a loss against what appears to be MU’s second and fourth worst ranked opponents.
No, I’m not particularly taking this weekend’s teams very seriously. Go look at the last seven words of the previous paragraph. Go look at the Where Are We Now? I wrote about the state of the Big East this season right as Marquette began league play. This is how things go in this league on the regular: Marquette and Creighton have to avoid disaster more often than they get to be challenged and bolster themselves. It is what it is.
One last thing.
As I type this on Wednesday night to publish it on Thursday afternoon 24 hours before the first of the two matches, there is currently no listing for either match on ESPN+. Marquette doesn’t have the links on their schedule page, neither Seton Hall nor St. John’s have the links on their schedule pages, and ESPN themselves does not have the links on their schedule pages. St. John’s is going to stream Friday’s match against DePaul, but not Saturday’s against Marquette. Neither school has another event going on at the same time, so it’s not like they picked one event over another to devote television production attention to and volleyball lost the battle. They’re just not doing it. For some reason. In year #1 of the contract with ESPN.
That’s weird, right? Seton Hall and St. John’s are being weird, right?
Big East Game #5: at Seton Hall Pirates (6-9, 0-4 Big East)
Date: Friday, October 10, 2025
Time: 4pm Central
Location: Walsh Gymnasium, South Orange, New Jersey
Streaming: You’d think ESPN+, but it’s not currently on the schedule.
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Marquette is 26-5 all time against Seton Hall. Marquette hasn’t lost to the Pirates since 2014, when Seton Hall beat MU in Walsh Gym in the regular season and then again in five sets in the Big East semifinals in Milwaukee. It’s been 17 straight wins for the Golden Eagles now, and four of the last six meetings have been sweeps.
Based on RPI data, the Seton Hall season officially turned for the worse on September 6 when they lost 3-1 at home to an NJIT team that is currently #339 in the RPI. They’ve put up a record of 6-9 without playing a single top 50 team, which is a pretty great way to end up at #261 as the Pirates are right now. They come into Friday afternoon on a losing streak that encompasses just their four Big East matches as they won their non-conference finale by beating #212 Coppin State in an event hosted by Maryland.
Their five set loss to Providence in their most recent match is SHU’s second worst loss of the season by RPI measures behind only that NJIT defeat. Seton Hall had to win the fourth set in order to get the thing to five frames in the first place, and then they let the match slip away from them after an 11-11 tie in the decisive set.
Sadie Reich has been the only consistent offensive threat on the Seton Hall roster this season. She averages 3.61 kills per set while nearly doubling up everyone else in total attacks. Reich is hitting just .216 this year, but again SHU is funneling their whole offense through her. Daria Safian is SHU’s most likely #2 attacker in this match at 2.25 kills per set, but she’s hitting under .200. Senna Roberts-Navarro is the #2 by way of kills per set average, but she has missed all of Big East play so far, so it seems like her availability is in question at the very least.
I’m guessing Emilee Fuller will set for Seton Hall on Friday, as assists leader Gwen Adler missed both matches last weekend. Fuller put up 30 assists in the five set loss to the Friars and Alexis Opland added 16 there. Both Fuller and Opland had 11 assists at UConn the match before PC, so it seems that even if Adler will be out, SHU will stick with some kind of setter rotation.
I’m getting the impression that Seton Hall’s biggest problem this season has been merely putting the same seven women on the floor match after match.
Big East Game #6: at St. John’s Red Storm (5-12, 1-3 Big East)
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2025
Time: 4pm Central
Location: Carnesecca Arena, Jamaica, New York
Streaming: You’d think ESPN+, but it’s not currently on the schedule.
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle, if it ends up on ESPN+, I suppose
Marquette is 27-9 all time against St. John’s with every match in the series coming since October of 2005. With that said, last year’s season sweep of the Red Storm moved the mark to 8-2 in the last 10 and was a nice bounce back to the historical trend after a 1-2 mark in 2023 including a loss in the Big East tournament.
It seems unlikely that St. John’s is going to be able to find a way to finish third in the Big East this season as the preseason poll projected them to end up. Nothing’s for sure yet, not after just four matches, but 1-3 with the win coming against the Providence team picked to finish last? It’s not a great sign.
The real bummer of this? I think head coach Joanne Persico thought she had a contender of sorts here. The Red Storm scheduled matches against four teams that are currently in the RPI top 35 in non-conference play, which is the sort of thing we’ve been watching Marquette do for years in order to boost themselves up come tournament selection time. The problems isn’t that the Johnnies went 0-4 in those games, it’s the fact that they also lost to #235 San Jose and #187 Hawaii and #171 Utah Valley. The fact that they did all of that on the same trip out to Honolulu is merely secondary to the fact that St. John’s started out the year 0-6.
It’s reasonable to ask if St. John’s is asking too much from Erin Jones. She leads the team in total attacks with nearly twice as many as anyone else, and that’s why she leads them in kills at 3.45/set. That’s good enough for top 10 in the Big East, and at a .261 hitting percentage, we can’t even really say that STJ is leaving points laying around by overusing her to attack. The reason why they might be asking too much from her is because Jones is also their alternate setter, averaging 3.27 assists while rotating with Martina Capponcelli, who averages 5.67 helpers/set. You gotta make whatever choices make sense for the sum total of your roster, but I can’t help but wonder if STJ would be better if Erin Jones was focusing on one thing or the other.
It’s hard to say that for certain, because the next three attackers down the kills/set chart have missed time one way or another this season. Ella Parker has missed eight matches this season but has played in all four Big East contests, Martina Ghezzi has missed three matches and 21 sets in total, and Kendall White has missed three matches but only 16 sets. That makes Chloe Bell the next best attacker to play in every match this season, and she’s averaging 1.34 kills/set on .192 hitting. It’s not what you want, but neither is Ghezzi’s .088 hitting.
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