Marquette Volleyball Loses Big East Opener To Xavier, 3-0

On Wednesday night, Marquette volleyball opened their Big East schedule against the Musketeers of Xavier.  Well, at least, they were scheduled to do that.

Xavier jumped on MU early and often, running away to a 3-0 (23-25, 16-25, 19-25) sweep in a match that Marquette where was really never competitive.  It's the first time that Marquette has lost their conference opener since 2010, which, in terms of what's happened to this team in the past four seasons, seems like a lifetime ago.

While the final margin on the first set was only two points, Xavier had taken a 5-0 lead to start the game off.  MU head coach Ryan Theis called the standard "Hey, is everyone awake" time out, and slowly but surely, Marquette crawled back into it before eventually letting it slip away from them.

Just a bad start, right?  NOPE.  Things went from bad to worse in the second as Xavier started out building an 11-4 lead and eventually turned it into a 17-8 lead.  For a while in the middle of it, it definitely seemed like Marquette was destined to not even get to double digits, but a late flurry allowed them to get to 16 before the Musketeers closed things out.  Not much changed for the Golden Eagles after intermission, as Xavier built one more lead in order to coast to the sweep in less than 90 minutes.

Marquette hit just .147 in the match, largely due to Taylor Louis taking nearly 40% of the offense while hitting just .073 on the night.  Joy Miley ended up leading Marquette with 10 kills.  Abbey Bessler had the match high in kills for Xavier with 16, and she also chipped in 10 digs.

Up Next: Well, let's take a second crack at this conference play thing, shall we?  Marquette will be back in action at home on Saturday night when they host DePaul.  The Blue Demons (11-2, 0-1 Big East) had an 11 match winning streak snapped on Wednesday night when they lost 3-2 at home to Butler in the Big East opener for both squads.