The Golden Eagles swept both Villanova and St. John’s to assure them no worse than a 6th place finish with 6 matches to play.
Six straight wins at the McGuire Center this past weekend extended Marquette volleyball’s winning streak to 11 straight matches and ran their Big East record to 11-1. They picked up 3-0 wins against Villanova (25-14, 25-15, 25-15) and St. John’s (25-20, 25-21, 26-24) and thus guaranteed that at worst, they would finish in a tiebreaker with the Red Storm in the Big East standings. Said tiebreaker would land them in sixth place in the standings, and that’s good enough to lock up a conference tournament berth with six matches left to go in the regular season.
The telltale moment in the match against Villanova was in fact the opening of the first set. Not the part where the Wildcats took a 7-5 lead on the first 12 points, the part that came after that. That was the 8-1 Marquette run that featured Villanova head coach Josh Steinbach losing a challenge, being visibly perturbed about it, VU’s Ozzie Ozonoh sending an attack on the next rally very long, and Steinbach calling a very perturbed timeout.
In case it wasn’t clear that Villanova might not really have any answers for Marquette on this particular day from that exchange, the Golden Eagles threw up a 5-1 burst after VU’s timeout. That’s a 13-2 stretch that left the scoreboard reading 18-9 Marquette. From there, the Golden Eagles just traded points for the rest of the set.
Set #2 opened up 8-2 in favor of the Golden Eagles. It was about like that the rest of the way. Ella Foti sent a kill off the top of a Villanova player’s head, which I’m not sure is more about Foti’s intent or the defender misreading the angle of the attack while attempting to dig it out. A vicious crosscourt kill from Foti made it 17-8, and you get the point here.
One thing you can not do when your opponent is crushing you — Marquette hit .379 and .421 in the first two sets — is just start handing them points. That’s what Villanova did in the third, as six different VU errors amounted for half of MU’s points at 12-5 when Steinbach called timeout. The Wildcats did cut the margin to three in the middle of the frame at 15-12, but the Golden Eagles answered with four straight and seven of the next eight. 22-13, and each of Marquette’s final five points of the set were more Villanova miscues.
Marquette spread the offense around pretty well in this one, with four different women registering at least seven kills, and Natalie Ring came out the other side as the leader with 11. Hitting .417 tends to do that for you.
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?
Even though St. John’s is behind Villanova in the standings, Marquette had a little bit tougher time with the Johnnies this weekend, just like they did when they went on the road against both squads earlier this season. MU pulled away very late in the first set, bouncing back from a Jadyn Garrison service error that pulled the Johnnies within one at 20-19. The next three points all went for the Golden Eagles, two on misfires by STJ’s Giorgia Walther, but that got Marquette to the brink, and kills from Aubrey Hamilton and Natalie Ring got them across the finish line with a five point margin.
Marquette got out to an early 9-4 lead on a kill by Hamilton in the second set, but the Johnnies didn’t just fade into the woodwork. MU didn’t get that lead back to five points again until 21-16 as part of a 7-3 expansion that got things to set point at 24-18. The Red Storm tacked on three late points, but Hamilton got one to go to close it out before things really got nervous.
It started to look like St. John’s was going to get things to go to four sets, just like they did in New York. An ace from Wiktoria Kowalczyk made it 13-9 in favor of the visitors, and the Golden Eagles struggled to put two points together for a long time. They did it twice late to finally pull even at 22 on a kill from Hamilton, and a handling error by Kowalczyk moved Marquette to match point at 24-23. St. John’s got one kill to force it along to extra points, but kills from Natalie Ring and then Carsen Murray quickly ended things before the Red Storm had a chance to prolong things for another set.
Aubrey Hamilton was Marquette’s kills leader here with 14, scoring regularly all match long with a hitting percentage of .423, and not just at the emotionally important points as discussed here. Natalie Ring was also a force to be reckoned with, dropping down 11 while hitting .393. It would seem that the offense has completely shifted to Hamilton and Ring as the top attackers, with Jenna Reitsma’s role shifting to more of a support position, but hey, as long as it works.
Up Next: The nature of the travel schedule in the Big East means we’ve swung back around to a spread out week. On Wednesday, Marquette will be down in Indianapolis to tangle with Butler before returning for a Sunday contest against freshly minted #5 Creighton. Butler is 6-18 on the year and 4-8 in Big East action after a 3-0 loss to UConn on Saturday, while the Bluejays are on a 14 match winning streak and holding the best AVCA poll ranking in program history.