To be honest, I could just reprint last year’s version of this article and you couldn’t tell the difference.
We’re inching closer and closer to the start of the 2024 Marquette volleyball season! It’s probably about time that we get around to doing some serious season previewing before head coach Ryan Theis leads his troops against Eastern Illinois on August 30th. We’ll start things off with a look (a verrrrry long look, as it turns out) at the returning players on the roster here. In future installments, we’ll take a peek at the new faces on the MU roster for this fall and figure out if any of them have a chance to break into the rotation right away, and then we’ll also talk about the three biggest questions facing the Golden Eagles this year.
Alright, let’s get to it, because we’re going to be here for a minute…….
OUTSIDE HITTERS
We start the show with Aubrey Hamilton, who was Marquette’s only attacker with more than 1,000 swings a year ago, and her .274 hitting percentage paid that off to the tune of a team high 3.77 kills per set. That means, as good as she was in 2022, she was even better in 2023. I don’t think we can hope that she’ll raise her hitting percentage another 27 points in 2024, although I’m not going to tell her that she’s not allowed to hit .301, I just don’t think it’s likely. Her digs were a little bit down, but her blocks were about the same, but all told her points were up, and that’s why she’s probably Marquette’s best shot at a Player of the Year trophy, both preseason (I’m writing this on August 16th) and postseason.
Hamilton’s #2 is Jenna Reitsma, who had a bit of a struggle in 2023. She finished the year hitting just .178, down from .210 as a sophomore. I think it’s safe to say that the full picture of what she brings to the table — nearly an ace every other set, 2.2 digs, a block every match — means that Ryan Theis has to leave her on the floor, but she has to find a way to be a more productive secondary hitting option for the Golden Eagles. MU has other offensive weapons to be sure, but Hamilton and the rest of the attackers can be improved if opponents have to take Reitsma’s offense seriously.
We’re going to skip over a fairly notable hitting option for a very specific reason and discuss Ella Holmstrom, Sienna Ifill, and Natalie Ring all together. All three are juniors this fall, and Holmstrom is the most experienced of the trio after two seasons with just 103 sets played. To be clear about it: Marquette played 115 as a team in 2023. Ifill, who is listed specifically as a Right Side Hitter on the roster — has seen the floor for 51 sets in two years, while Ring sat out all of last season as a plan after playing in just 19 sets as a freshman. It’s the third straight year with Hamilton and Reitsma ahead of all three women in the lineup, and there’s nothing about anything that says that’s going to change in 2024. Ifill did hit .311 in her 33 set spread across 21 matches last season, so there’s signs of grown here. I just don’t know if we’re going to see them play all that much yet again.
The attacker I skipped over in the regular rotation is Ella Foti, who missed a little bit of time last season. She hit .174 on just over 500 swings in her 28 appearances, but that’s not the full picture of her as a player. Marquette deployed her as a secondary setter, sometimes playing two setters at once, sometimes having just Foti on the floor running the show. she averaged 2.22 assists per set last season as the Golden Eagles averaged over 12. Believe it or not, that was only sixth best in the Big East, which is a little bit funny since MU was #2 in hitting percentage. There’s room for growth for Marquette, and a little bit extra accuracy on swings when Foti’s a hitter and a little extra precision on the passes when she’s a setter, and there’s an extra level for the Golden Eagles to find.
SETTER
I wanted to wrap up the last section with Foti as a natural transition right into Yadhira Anchante. She’s the lone full fledged returning setter on the squad this year, and she averaged 9.41 assists per set last season. That was 1) Fifth best in the Big East and 2) Slightly by design, as MU’s attack is supposed to be slightly misleading with Foti on the floor not to mention Jenna Reitsma and the defensive specialists doing some work to get those passes to the hitters. Anchante also missed five matches last season due to an appendicitis issue and I’m sure she wasn’t really 100% back to full strength and mental focus for a few matches after going through that. She was an All-American in 2022 and the best setter in the Big East, so that’s clearly the goal for this fall. If she gets her assists back north of 10 per set and starts getting a liiiiitle bit sneakier with her setter kill attempts — she hit just .234 last year after .371 in 2022 — then that will help Marquette find that extra level I was talking about with the hitters.
MIDDLE BLOCKERS
Marquette may have the two best middles in the Big East. I’m not smart enough to know enough nor am I dumb enough to just presume I know what I’m talking about, so I won’t just come out and say it as a fact, but I’d have to wager that we could say that Carsen Murray and Hattie Bray are in the conversation for the best pair of middle blockers in the country. Both were top 15 in the Big East in hitting percentage last season, with Murray’s .374 coming in as second best in the league. Both were top 15 in blocks, with Murray leading the entire conference at 1.12 per set. Bray was a bit more of an attacking middle, finishing the year #3 on the roster in total attempts, and she was third in points per set behind Hamilton and Reitsma. at 2.68/set. There’s a way to get both women more involved — Bray on blocking and Murray on attack — that leads to more points and stronger play in general from the Golden Eagles, but we know what they’re doing right now works, too.
I wonder if there’s a role for Morgan Daugherty this season. Last year, Marquette made use of Anastasija Svetnik regularly with 78 sets played in 29 matches. Part of that was because Murray missed time early and then I feel like Theis and his staff wanted to make sure Murray wasn’t pushing herself back from a minor injury too hard as well. That’s hopefully not going to be a problem for this year’s version of the team, but that is a lot of rotations swallowed up by Svetnik that does have to go somewhere. MU lists Daugherty as a junior on the website, but she is a redshirt sophomore in terms of eligibility after sitting out in 2022. She played in just five total sets last season, so it’s hard to say what the coaching staff really thinks about what she can contribute right now.
DEFENSIVE SPECIALISTS
This brings us to the biggest question of the preseason for Marquette. Last year, it was Sarah Kushner in for one season as a grad transfer playing libero for the Golden Eagles. She played in all but four sets and averaged a team high 4.12 digs per frame. That was fourth best in the Big East and one of just five women to average north of four. But like I said, Kushner was here for one year as a grad transfer, and now MU has to figure out who’s going to be the libero in 2024.
Before I realized that Kushner came to Marquette specifically to play libero after operating as an outside hitter for Illinois State, I figured that Samantha Naber was the most likely option at libero. She played an awful lot in 2022 next to Carly Skrabak, and thus she was used to the ideas and concepts that Theis wants from his libero on the court. Instead, the job went to Kushner, and Naber found herself a little sidelined in the process. She played in just 78 sets in 2023, but she still averaged a career best 1.53 digs per frame.
We saw a lot of Molly Berezowitz as a freshman last fall, partially because she was doing a lot of good work as a service substitute. She averaged 0.33 aces per set, which was second on the team and sixth best in the Big East. That got Berezowitz into 38 of Marquette’s 32 matches, but she didn’t do much in the way of traditional defensive specialist work, averaging just 0.58 digs per frame. Is she ready to pick up the mantle of libero for the next three years, or is this her role going forward?
Whatever Berezowitz’s role was last season, Adriana Studer and Jadyn Garrison were further behind her on the depth chart for it. In 36 and 33 sets respectively, the pair garnered a handful of service errors without registering an ace, and neither one cleared even half a dig per set on average. I’m not going to say it’s impossible that either one ends up as Marquette’s libero this season, just that MU has had much clearer options in that role in front of them over the past two seasons. Those options aren’t there now, so I can’t rule it out, either.