The Golden Eagles toppled the #17 ranked team in the country on their own floor in order to get to the second weekend for the third time in program history.
They’ve never done this before.
For the second straight day, Marquette volleyball has done something that the program has never done before.
On Thursday, it was winning an NCAA tournament first round match for a third straight season.
On Friday, it was beating a seeded home team on their own floor. In this case, #5 seeded MU did it in the second round, besting #4 seeded Utah in five sets: 25-23, 25-22, 18-25, 24-26, and 15-12.
It shouldn’t have gotten to a fifth set, if we’re being honest about it. There’s the general principle of Marquette went up 2-0 and thus had two tries to end the match before the #17 ranked Utes knotted the match and forced the 15 point tiebreaker. There’s also the part where Marquette was up 16-15 in the third set, riding a 5-1 burst and forcing Utah to take a timeout. As you can see from the score a second ago there, the, uh, rest of the frame was not good for Marquette. Four straight for the home team, two for MU, and then another six straight extended the match to a fourth set. I guess the good news is that only two of the points were because of straight up errors by Marquette? I guess?
As you’d expect because MU never ran away with the first two frames, the fourth was tightly contested as well. It seemed like the Golden Eagles were on the verge of ending the match as they turned a 16-15 deficit into a 23-19 lead. Except MU never even got it to match point, in fact, they had to fend off a set point from the Utes, but that was their only marker in a 7-1 burst to end it.
That’s definitely not the kind of energy that you want to head to a fifth set with, especially since that one’s only to 15. Things can be weird with “play to 15, win by two,” and nowhere is that more obvious than the fact that MU had a 19-17 lead, the first two point advantage after 15 points, in the fourth set. That would have been good enough to win it, if it was a fifth set…. but it was a 25 pointer, and that gave Utah a chance to recover.
And speaking of chances to recover, things felt real bad for Marquette — even with a 4-2 lead — when Ella Foti rolled her ankle resetting her footwork while the ball was live. Foti’s not an obvious star for Marquette, but her past as a setter makes her a valuable piece in MU’s rotation…. and it was immediately obvious that she wasn’t coming back in this match.
Utah flipped the margin and took a 6-4 lead in the wake of Foti’s injury. MU bounced back to lead 8-7, but Utah tied it. First team to score seven points wins and gets to keep their season going.
Things got messy for a second with both teams making some mistakes, and Utah’s Lauren Jardine — who had a hell of a night with a team high 17 kills, nearly twice as many as anyone else and eight assisted blocks — provided what would turn out to be the final tie of the night at 12-all.
Then.
Aubrey Hamilton, bouncing back from four attack errors earlier in the set, putting one down for a kill, then teaming with Hattie Bray to stuff Jardine, and then, finally, one last kill, for a match high 20, pushing Marquette across the finish line with at 15-12 victory.
➡️ ! #NCAAWVB | @ESPNPlus pic.twitter.com/llAOtp9ZY1
— Marquette Volleyball (@MarquetteVB) December 7, 2024
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?
Up Next: Actually, we don’t know yet. Second round action will continue tomorrow, and MU’s Sweet 16 opponent will be decided between #1 seeded Penn State and #5 North Carolina. If the Nittany Lions win, MU will go to State College to face them, if the Tar Heels win, then #2 seed Creighton will be the host for the MU/UNC match.