The Golden Eagles welcome the Panthers to the McGuire Center for a mid-week non-conference crosstown clash.
And now, something completely different.
Okay, yes, it’s still volleyball for YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles women’s volleyball team. They’re not going to suddenly play a cricket match on Tuesday night or something. It is, however, not a Big East match. For whatever reason, head coach Ryan Theis saved two non-conference matches until this week.
Tuesday night will be the first one, with Marquette getting to take it easy in terms of travel and play at the McGuire Center. The other one will be on Saturday, and that will take a bit of traveling. In fact, Tuesday’s match will be MU’s third in a stretch of six contests in 10 days, and this coming weekend will have the Golden Eagles playing twice in New Jersey and once in Washington, D.C. before coming home. That’s quite the busy slate, and hopefully fatigue doesn’t start wearing on Marquette.
After all, Marquette did not look so hot through two sets against DePaul back on Friday night. That was the first match in this 10 day run, and yeah, MU eventually got the win. They had to play five sets to do it though, and that’s not really the kind of way you want to start a stretch that might be on the more physically taxing side of things.
We’re into the portion of the schedule where everyone in the country is starting to take on nicks and dings in terms of injuries. That’s a whole bunch of jumping and diving and smashing the ball with your hand all season long, and that eventually just starts catching up with you. Marquette is going to have to battle through some of that on top of not having much time to catch their breath for the rest of this week, all while looking to keep themselves in NCAA tournament at-large contention.
We’ll talk about what this weekend’s matches mean in terms of Big East play when we get there. For now, Marquette has to worry about a top 100 opponent that’s having a pretty good season so far….
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Match #18: vs Milwaukee Panthers (12-9, 7-2 Horizon League)
Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is, somehow, 34-46-1 all time against Milwaukee. The series dates all the way back to 1975, the first ever year of competitive volleyball at Marquette. 41 of those 80 matches happened before Marquette made the move to Division 1 in 1986, and since then the series stands at 22-16 in MU’s favor. Marquette has won the last 13 meetings with UWM’s most recent victory coming back in 2007, and last year’s encounter resulted in Milwaukee snapping a run of seven straight MU wins by way of a 3-0 sweep. This is the third straight year that the two sides have met after restarting a series that went dormant after 2017.
The record doesn’t necessarily make it make sense, but Milwaukee is quietly having a pretty good season. Tuesday night’s contest will be their fourth match against an RPI top 30 opponent after taking three top 10 losses before the middle of September. It will also be their seventh top 50 match of the season, and they are coming off a split home set against Wright State in Horizon League action that left WSU in first place and the Panthers in second. That was a big split for Milwaukee, as they were coming off their first Horizon League loss of the season. All told, the Panthers are, at least for the moment, a top 100 opponent for Marquette. I say for the moment because they’re #99, and it’s hard to tell for certain that they’ll stay up if they end up losing.
In any case, they’re 11-4 outside the top 50 and 11-2 outside the top 100. With 12 wins in their pocket this year after a 21-12 finish last season, they’ve already put together back-to-back 12 win seasons for the first time since 2016 and 2017. If Milwaukee keeps plowing through Horizon League squads, they’ll end up with back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since doing that in 2013 and 2014.
The goal for Marquette will be to make Madi Malone and Natalie Schmitz inefficient attackers. They’re the only two women averaging more than two kills per set, and they’re the only two with more than 400 total attack attempts on the season. As a pair, they will get the Panthers more than six kills per set, but Malone hits .227 this season and Schmitz is just over .200 at .208. Milwaukee doesn’t have the benefit of going to a middle with a big hitting percentage like Marquette does in Carsen Murray (.378) or Hattie Bray (.314), so getting Malone and Schmitz to start forcing shots into areas they shouldn’t is a viable way forward for the Golden Eagles.
Marquette will have to contend with Milwaukee switching setters, as Josie Johnson and Millica Tomic split time at that spot. Johnson has the slight edge on assists per set at 5.13 to 4.33 for Tomic, and she’s the starter, but they’ve both played in every set this season. Even though the rules would allow it, it looks like Milwaukee sticks with Kara Erdmann as their libero. She’s got the team lead in digs at 5.42 per set, which is a metric ton of digs. It’s the fourth most in the country through matches played on October 20th. At the net, it’ll be Lakyn Graves who does the most blocking. The Menomonee Falls native is averaging just under a block per set at 0.92.