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When Marquette faced off against Georgetown on Friday night at the McGuire Center, the result was almost lackluster admittedly through no fault of the home team.
The Golden Eagles opened their first Big East game at home on a 7-2 run. A Georgetown timeout forced Marquette out of cruise control, but the Hoyas only managed to pull to within three before the Golden Eagles stepped back on the gas to win the set 25-18.
The second set initially felt more competitive with Georgetown even taking a brief 3-2 lead before the two teams resumed trading points. It was the first and last Hoyas' lead of the match. With the teams knotted at 6 points each, the Golden Eagles strung together three straight points off a kill, opponent error, and block. They never looked back eventually taking the second set 25-15. Marquette followed that up with a 25-13 win in the third to sweep the match.
The Hoyas were good enough on the court that there wasn't a blood bath at the McGuire Center, but they were also not good enough to actually make the match very interesting. It's almost easy to see why Marquette and the Big East struggle for respect in voting for national rankings, as MU was able to fly through the match in under 90 minutes.
Autumn Bailey led Marquette with 11 kills while Meghan Niemann notched 5 blocks to go with her 10 kills on 12 error free swings. Setter Mary Nilles finished the match with 27 assists. Nilles stayed on the court for all but one point late in the second when Marquette had no setter on the court. Gabby Benda did not dress to play: she wore a boot on her right foot and used crutches to move about during timeouts.
Up Next: A rematch of last year's Big East championship match: Creighton at 6pm tonight. It felt ungracious to complain about the Golden Eagles' nine service errors against the Hoyas, but a higher caliber team like the Bluejays will make Marquette pay for those mistakes.