Two long standing rivals, standing across from another once again with a Big East title on the line.
2024 Big East Volleyball Tournament
Championship
#1 Creighton Bluejays vs #2 Marquette Golden Eagles
Date: Saturday, November 30, 2024
Time: 5pm Central
Location: DJ Sokol Arena, Omaha, Nebraska
Television: FS2, with Jon Schriner and Anna Connelly on the call
Streaming: FoxSports.com/live or the Fox Sports app
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
All Time Series: Creighton leads, 29-7
Season Series: Creighton won, 2-0, with a pair of 3-1 wins
The good news about Saturday’s Big East title match is that all that’s on the line for Marquette volleyball is the Big East title. At 23-7 overall this season, #20 in the RPI with no losses outside the top 85, and a #32 ranking in the Evollve calculations, the Golden Eagles should be feeling pretty safe about an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament if they were to come up short on Saturday.
That’s great news, because everything about this season and this moment as well says they’re more likely than not to come up short against the #5 ranked team in the country. Yep, that’s where Creighton was in Monday’s AVCA top 25 poll. That means that the Bluejays are right in the class with Pitt, Stanford, Wisconsin, and Kansas, four more teams that have stood across the net from the Golden Eagles and said “dang, that team’s really good, we need to take them seriously and not give them a chance.”
Marquette had their moments against all five opponents this season, taking two sets from Creighton, one in each of their two meetings, as well as peeling a set off of Wisconsin and Kansas. The Golden Eagles didn’t win a set against Pitt or Stanford, but they didn’t look completely outclassed, they just lost. Marquette’s not capable of surprising anyone this season, and that goes double for a Creighton team that’s been laser focused all season. They’re not going to suddenly take a day off against Marquette because they’re comfortable as well. In fact, beating Marquette could end up being the thing that pushes the Bluejays over the top to host a regional this season. They’re not going to take that lightly.
Which brings us to Marquette in this moment instead of the whole season. The Golden Eagles probably need their best sustained effort of the year to beat the attacking tandem of Norah Sis (3.92 kills per set) and Ava Martin (3.66/set) for three sets out of five. If Hattie Bray isn’t available because of an injury picked up in the regular season finale on Sunday, as she was not available on Friday night, I don’t know if Marquette can muster their best sustained effort of the season. Morgan Daugherty was more than respectable in Bray’s place on Friday, but that was against a Villanova team that scraped into the conference tournament at 9-9 in the league and 17-13 overall this season. Nothing against Daugherty here, but she’s not the same player as Bray, who earned a unanimous nod to the all-Big East team earlier this week.
Marquette hasn’t been able to beat one of these top 10 ranked teams on their schedule this season at full power. Even if Bray can go on Saturday, I think it’s safe to say they won’t be at full power against the Bluejays. Does that mean they can’t win? That’s why they play the games, but this feels an awful lot like Creighton Machine Go Brrrrrr one more time this year for Marquette.