Marquette Volleyball Makes Quick Work Of DePaul

Marquette Volleyball turned the McGuire Center into a shooting gallery on Saturday night, hitting an outstanding .364 as they swept DePaul, 3-0 (25-17, 25-17, 25-20), to even their Big East record at 1-1.

Marquette raced out of the gate against DePaul, taking leads of 7-3, 10-4, and 15-7 before coasting to the 25-17 win in the first set.  The second set tilted more towards the Blue Demons in the early going, with DePaul holding an 11-9 lead midway through the frame.  A 4-0 run by Marquette flipped it around, as the Golden Eagles got kills from Meghan Niemann and Joy Miley, along with a block from Niemann and Taylor Louis to secure the lead that they would never give up for the rest of the set.  Officially, DePaul hit .137 in the second set, but they handed Marquette 14 points through various types of errors in that game.

A 5-1 run capped off by a kill from Louis opened the third stanza, and it was all Marquette, almost all the time in the set.  I say almost, because DePaul did have a 5-0 run that narrowed it to 20-19 late in the game.  Back to back kills from Joy Miley turned it back around for MU, and DePaul would score just one more point before a Jenna Rosenthal kill wrapped up the three set win for the Golden Eagles.

Miley was the worst attacker on the day for Marquette, but that's not me trying to rip her.  She still hit .296 in the match, which would be a good day almost any other time.  But every single person who recorded an attack had a hitting percentage better than the transfer from Long Beach State, which shows how well Marquette played here after looking listless against Xavier on Wednesday.  DePaul's giant piles of errors limited Marquette's offensive stats in this match, as Louis and Miley tied for the match high in kills with 11.  Even with the limited offense, Sara Blasier still put in a good effort at setter, recording 34 assist.  Callie Huebener topped the charts for DePaul, recording 10 kills.

How about some post match reactions from head coach Ryan Theis, courtesy of GoMarquette.com?

I think that's an interesting point from Theis about Teal Schnurr, who started in this match but hasn't played much this season.  She was a very active part of the Marquette offense here, and it'll be interesting to see if the Golden Eagles stick with this kind of formation.

Up Next: The Golden Eagles get one more home match before hitting the road for the first time in Big East play.  They'll host Butler (5-10, 2-1 Big East) on Wednesday night at 7pm.