The Golden Eagles hit the road for two final regular season contests with only positioning for the NCAA tournament on the line.
Technically, Marquette volleyball is playing for a share of a Big East regular season title this weekend. Or, rather, at least they’re doing that on Friday night for sure. If #5 Creighton beats DePaul on Friday in Chicago, that’s the outright title to the Bluejays, rendering Marquette’s Sunday contest with the Blue Demons meaningless in terms of the conference standings. MU is already four matches clear of UConn and DePaul in the standings, so they will skip ahead to the Big East tournament semifinals next Friday in Omaha no matter what happens this weekend.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not something on the line here for Marquette.
After last weekend’s tow matches against sub-180 RPI competition, Marquette’s own RPI ranking slipped two spots to #24. That’s almost assuredly good enough to get the Golden Eagles into the NCAA tournament, so that’s not a problem. However, that doesn’t mean MU can take this weekend off. Playing DePaul on the road is a good match for RPI purposes as the Blue Demons are #77 right now. That should help boost MU back up a little bit. Playing #204 Xavier, even on the road, is very much a “don’t trip over your own shoelaces” situation even as XU’s RPI has been drifting in a positive direction all season.
So, while the Big East regular season title is probably out of reach, that doesn’t mean there’s not something important to play for here. Two wins will probably clinch an at-large NCAA bid for the Golden Eagles even with their 1-6 record against top 50 competition. That’s probably because MU is 1-6 against top 14 competition with no opponents sitting between #15 and #52. The strength of schedule is too much to ignore for the committee, I think….. as long as you don’t give them a reason to ignore you in the final week of the regular season.
REMINDER: Marquette’s home contests are streamed nearly exclusively on FloSports, and the same goes for almost all Big East home games and almost all league schedule contests. If you are paying full price for FloSports at $30 a month, you are doing it wrong. Please use this link to pay less than half of that, and even less if you can use a Marquette.edu email address.
Big East Match #17: at Xavier Musketeers (10-16, 8-8 Big East)
Date: Friday, November 22, 2024
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Cintas Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Marquette is 21-9 all time against Xavier. The series went 2-2 before MU was officially a part of Division 1 in 1986, so that’s 19-7 since then. Marquette has won 11 straight meetings against the Musketeers, dating back to XU winning in Cincinnati and again in Indianapolis in the 2016 Big East tournament.
Bad news for Xavier: Their season is riding on this match. Well, technically, I suppose both matches this weekend, as they come into Friday tied for sixth place in the Big East with Villanova, and only the top six teams in the standings get into the conference tournament. Unfortunately for the Musketeers, they have to play both Marquette and #5 Creighton this weekend, so that’s going to be a rough time getting the wins they need to have a chance to keep pace with the Wildcats and hope the tiebreakers go their way.
This could have been solved on their own account, but Xavier has lost four of their last five matches coming into the final weekend of the regular season. The lone win in there was on the road against the woeful Providence team that currently sits at 1-15 in conference play. One of XU’s recent four losses was against Villanova because of course it was.
The first meeting between these two teams was a relatively simple sweep for the Golden Eagles, holding Xavier to 13 points in the first set and 14 in the third. In the second frame, Xavier held a 15-14 edge as the Musketeers fired three straight service aces to flip the margin in their favor. Marquette outscored them 11-5 the rest of the way, and then I already mentioned the 14 point third frame for XU.
Xavier got a good day from Sarah Stevens in the first match, as she had nine kills on just 15 swings. That was an outsized day from her, as Stevens only averages 1.43 kills per set this season even though she’s hitting .303. Most of the offense runs through Anna Taylor and Emma Grace, and the Taylor thing I get. She had nine kills and hit .222 against Marquette in the first meeting, and she’s averaging 2.88/set and hitting .247. That’s not world-beating, but that’s fine. Grace, though? 3.09 kills per set to lead the team….. but she’s hitting .144 while taking nearly 300 more swings than Taylor even while missing six sets along the way. I dunno, stop forcing things that don’t work well? Marquette neutralized Grace in the first match, evening her out to five kills and five errors on 27 attempts.
Big East Match #18: at DePaul Blue Demons (18-10, 10-6 Big East)
Date: Sunday, November 24, 2024
Time: Noon Central
Location: McGrath-Phillips Arena, Chicago, Illinois
Television: Marquee Sports Network
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteVB
Marquette is 44-29 all time against DePaul, but that’s a little misleading. MU went 2-4 against the Blue Demons before officially becoming a Division 1 program in 1986. So it’s 42-25 in Division 1 since 1986, and even that’s misleading. Marquette is currently on a 27 match winning streak against DePaul dating all the way back to the 2009 season. In fairness to DePaul, things are getting closer, and by closer, I mean the Blue Demons have won at least one set in three of the last five meetings, including forcing things to five sets in Milwaukee earlier this season.
Yes, the match is only on Marquee Sports Network. Yes, that’s the Chicago Cubs’ TV network that’s exclusively available in Chicago and nowhere else. Yes, this cropped up earlier this season with men’s soccer when they visited DePaul. Yes, it’s garbage to sell your matches to a television provider that’s impossible for anyone outside your metro area to watch.
I believe that, officially, DePaul hasn’t clinched a spot in the Big East tournament yet even though they’re tied with UConn for third place right now. The Blue Demons are 10-6 in the standings, but two losses — and they play Creighton and Marquette this weekend — lands them with eight losses, same as the two teams tied for sixth place right now. DePaul catches a break by way of Xavier, one of those 8-8 teams, also having to play the exact same opponents, so they’re probably going to get into the tourney……. but it’s not a guarantee, not yet.
The first match between these two teams this season was one that took a whole bunch of determination from Marquette. The Golden Eagles fell behind 2-0 at the McGuire Center on identical scores of 25-20. Maybe a smarter volleyball mind can tell you the fine details of what was off for MU through two sets, but it felt like the Golden Eagles never quite got into an extra gear to grab control of the thing. They found it in the third, rolling to a 25-16 win, but the fourth set was a little bit tighter. Marquette was able to hold off DePaul, but the Blue Demons fended off set points five times before MU ended it at 25-23. I know, 24-18 is a sizeable gap generally speaking, but then the Golden Eagles just couldn’t get over the hump, which was an ominous tone for the tiebreaker frame.
The Golden Eagles did get up 13-10 but couldn’t quite shove the door closed right away. DePaul pushed off match point twice with kills from Jill Pressly before MU got the last two points of the night.
Let’s avoid doing that again, shall we? Great plan, glad we all agree.
Pressly is #1 on the scouting report, and she had 25 kills in that first match on .284 hitting. That’s a good night for her, as she averages 4.24/set and hits .246 this season. She’s going to be an all-Big East performer next week, so stopping another great night from her has to be high on the list.
Aly Kindelberger had 11 kills last time around and that was on .320 hitting. Getting DePaul to go to her is probably a bad plan, but getting the offense going to Audrey Klemp wouldn’t be the worst thing. She had more swings than Kindelberger against the Golden Eagles, but hit just .030 to match Kindelberger in kills. Klemp is the #2 attacker on the team in terms of kills per set and overall attempts this season, so that’s DePaul’s natural tendency anyway.