The Golden Eagles swept UConn and Providence this weekend, and in relatively easy fashion, too.
Look, volleyball’s not a particularly complicated sport. Cause the ball to land on your opponent’s side of the floor more often than they do that to you, and you win.
On Friday, Marquette converted attack attempts to points at a .305 clip against UConn, as the Huskies hit just .115 against them. The result? A 3-0 Marquette victory.
On Sunday, it was .330 hitting for Marquette and just .018 hitting for Providence as the Friars just barely scraped into positive territory late in the contest. The result? A 3-0 Marquette victory.
All told, across the three sets, Marquette outscored their foes 152-98.
There’s not much to individually recap here. Marquette pulled away slowly but surely across the first set against the Huskies before a 25-19 win and then led 20-6 before allowing a few points late in the second. The only concerning play of the entire weekend came in the third set on Friday, as Marquette went up 17-11 and led 20-12 against UConn on a kill by Ella Foti. The Huskies won eight of the next nine points to turn it into a competitive situation, and Marquette couldn’t put down three straight tries at match point before UConn took a 25-24 lead. It shouldn’t have gotten to that point, but a combo block from Hattie Bray and Yadhira Anchante combined with a kill from Aubrey Hamilton to get it back to match point Marquette and a win on an error by UConn’s Emma Werkmeister.
Sunday was much more straight forward. 25-10 in the first, and the Golden Eagles were up 23-8 before that happened. After that, head coach Ryan Theis went into his lineup science laboratory, pulling Ella Foti and Aubrey Hamilton out of the rotation for the second set. A 15-7 lead made Theis look smart there, and I’d bet he wished it went smoother after MU was up 21-13 late. PC scored some points to make it look competitive, but it wasn’t. The third set was 9-1 before Providence had a chance to blink, and it was 22-10 before again, PC scored a few late.
Aubrey Hamilton and Jenna Reitsma led the way against UConn with 11 kills each. No on e got to double digits against Providence thanks to the lineup shuffling, so that means Natalie Ring got to lead the team with nine kills while tying Hamilton for the most attempts on the team. Yadhira Anchante doesn’t quite get to average 10 assists a set after finishing the weekend with 56 helpers.
Up Next: Creighton in Omaha. This one will mean a lot for Marquette, both in terms of an NCAA tournament profile builder as well as the Big East regular season title race. The Bluejays swept the same two teams as Marquette did this weekend, just in the opposite order, to move to 11-2 on the year and 2-0 in Big East play. We’ll see what the poll says on Monday afternoon, but I’d imagine Creighton will at the very least be in the top 10 after being ranked #6 in the country this past week.