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The 2013 season may have been the most successful season in Marquette volleyball history. The team won the Big East regular season and tournament titles, they won an NCAA tournament game for the second time in three seasons, Elizabeth Koberstein was named Big East Player of the Year and included in the AVCA All-American Third Team, and Meghan Nieman and Autumn Bailey earned AVCA All-American Honorable Mention nods.
In 2014, Marquette returns the five starters not named Elizabeth Koberstein, but not the coaching staff that directed the ship last season. Bond Shymansky is running the show at Iowa now, and the Marquette reigns have been taken up by Ryan Theis. He starts his first season running the show with a trip to Fort Collins, Colorado to participate in the Colorado State Rams Volleyball Classic. In addition to seeing CSU, who finished 2013 with the best winning percentage in the country, Marquette will square off with UC-Santa Barbara and VCU as well.
The following weekend has Marquette in Washington, D.C., to match up with host American and Florida State, both of whom advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament last year. MU's home opener is on September 12th, where they will play four matches in two days while hosting the Marquette Invitational. That tournament will be the only non-conference home action of the season.
After a three day trip to Florida take on Florida, Central Florida, and Jacksonville on September 19-21, Marquette opens the Big East schedule against Providence. The Friars are returning to the Big East in 2014 after nine seasons as an independent and four as a member of the America East conference. Marquette's home conference opener comes on Friday, October 3, when Georgetown comes to the Al McGuire Center.
From there, it'll be nothing but Big East contests for the rest of the regular season, except for a mid-week trip to the east side to play UW-Milwaukee. After MU wraps up the conference schedule with a Senior Night match against DePaul on November 22, all that's left on the schedule is the Big East tournament. Unfortunately, that's all the detail we can give you on that, because the location of the conference tourney has yet to be decided.
You can check out the full schedule here.
