The thing I suspected was going to happen to Marquette volleyball this season happened on Friday night: The Golden Eagles took a loss to the best team in the Big East that wasn’t Marquette or Creighton.
Xavier came into the McGuire Center with a 16-2 record and an RPI one spot better than MU’s, and they left with a five set victory over the Golden Eagles on scores of 25-20, 14-25, 25-21, 19-25, and 15-13. It’s Marquette’s first regular season loss in Big East play to a team not named Creighton since the Golden Eagles lost to St. John’s on October 14, 2023, and first Big East regular season home loss since a 3-2 loss to Butler on October 21, 2017.
One day later, Marquette welcomed a 9-12 Butler team to 770 North 12th Street and easily took care of business in a 3-0 (25-15, 25-20, 25-9) sweep. The end result is a Marquette squad that is 12-6 on the year with a 6-2 mark in the Big East and for now, they look up at Creighton and Xavier in the Big East standings, arm in arm with 6-2 Villanova.
The story of Friday night is Marquette’s inconsistency. If you look at those set scores, you can figure it out pretty quickly, but there were signs right from the get go. MU went up 7-3 in the first set and then immediately gave up a 10-1 run to the Musketeers. That 13-8 margin didn’t end things, far from it, but Marquette was only able to get as close as one point at 15-14 and Xavier scored four of the final five points to lock up their win. Take that run out, and you have Marquette winning the remaining points 19-15. The set was there for them to win, they just put themselves in a bad spot early.
Set #2 looks lopsided from the end of it, but the hitting percentages make it look so much worse. Marquette hit .440 in the frame and held Xavier to -0.088 as the Golden Eagles spent an awful lot of the set bumping their lead back up to a high of eight points. Did any of that carry over to set #3? Not in the slightest, as Marquette hit .065 but was right there at the end at 21-19 before three attack errors pushed the Musketeers to set point. It certainly looks like Marquette was not that far away from winning this match 3-0 but instead they were down 2-1 and in a bit of trouble heading to the fourth frame.
The Golden Eagles had a little bit of an edge for a lot of the fourth set, but a late 6-0 run pushed it from a one point margin to 23-16 MU. They just had to steer the plane into the hanger at that point, and Hattie Bray scored kills for the points that forced the decisive fifth set of the night. Again, the inconsistency plagued Marquette as a pair of kills from Natalie Ring powered them to a 4-1 lead out of the gate and a block by Bray and Elena Radeff had MU up 6-3. Not an overpowering lead, but when you’re playing to 15, one that you could manage into a win.
5-0 Xavier with three attack errors by the Golden Eagles.
Tied at 8. Tied at 9. Tied at 11, Marquette up 12-11 on a kill by Radeff.
Service error, service ace, MU attack error, match point Xavier. Ring and Schmidt blocked the Musketeers, but Emma Parks fired an attack long — which is in the play by play as a bad set, which, what? — and that was that.
Even through the consistency problems in the previous two hours, Marquette was right there at the end, but they just couldn’t hold it together long enough to finish it up. Hitting percentage isn’t everything, but I think it says something about Marquette’s inability to pull this match together that the Golden Eagles hit .186 on the night while limiting Xavier’s attack to just .101 on the other side of the net, including a flat .000 in the final set.
Losing like that can be deflating, and when you’re playing again 24 hours later, you can go through some things. That did not happen on Saturday, as Marquette came roaring out of the blocks, starting off 6-0 against Butler and hitting .483 in the first set. The lead hit seven, eight, 10, 12, 13 points at 22-9. Butler had a late flurry to make it look competitive, but it wasn’t. Same thing goes for the second set, although that took a minute to kick in. After a back and forth opening, Marquette pushed the margin to six on an Isabela Haggard ace to cap a 4-0 burst. A kill from Keira Schmidt had the Golden Eagles up eight, 24-16, and sitting on set point before another late flurry pulled Butler closer than they actually were.
Set #3 was bad times for Butler as Marquette started the frame off up 11-0. Only two of those were pure attacking errors by Butler — some of them were Marquette blocks, which go as errors — and Butler miscues were the name of the game in the final frame. MU induced 11 errors just in the attacking variety from the Bulldogs, and the visitors’ -0.258 hitting in the set dropped them to -0.032 hitting for the entire match. It was 15-2 and 21-5 before Elena Radeff closed it out.
Very little carry over of the problems from the night before, perhaps partly because Butler’s not as good as Xavier, but Marquette needed to handle business, so they did.
Up Next: Marquette hits the road for their next four matches, and next weekend will give the Golden Eagles a chance to set the tone relative to the Big East standings. On Friday evening, they’ll be in Washington for a match against Georgetown, and 24 hours later, they’ll be in the Philadelphia area to tangle with that Villanova team that is currently tied with the Golden Eagles for third in the standings. Both matches are set to start at 6pm Central, and both matches will be on ESPN+.
