Marquette Volleyball Announces 2016 Schedule

The 2016 Marquette Volleyball schedule is exactly what you'd expect it to be: 9 home Big East games, 9 road Big East games, three games in the Marquette Invitational, and a whole mess of road trips to various other tournaments.

Along the way, the Golden Eagles will be playing 10 games against teams that played in the 2015 NCAA tournament, although they'll only be playing eight NCAA tournament games. Remember: Creighton and Villanova both made the 64 team field last year, so that's four games right there. Marquette will start the season off with a match against last year's #1 overall seed, USC. That will be part of a tournament hosted by the Trojans, and MU will also get a crack at Santa Clara, who lost to Michigan in the opening round of the NCAAs last year.

The second weekend of the season sends Marquette out to Kansas, where they'll play in a tournament hosted by Wichita State. The Shockers were an NCAA tournament team a year ago, defeating Kansas State in the first round before losing to #4 Nebraska. The following weekend will give MU another road game against an NCAA tournament team from last year when they head down to Lexington to play in an event hosted by Kentucky. The Wildcats were knocked out in the first round by a 3-0 loss to American, but hey: an appearance is an appearance.

Marquette will double up on fun when they host the Marquette Invitational on September 16th and 17th. The official home opener for the season will be on the 16th when Iowa State comes to the McGuire Center. The Cyclones were knocked out of the NCAA tournament in 2015 in the second round by Wisconsin, so let's hope that their luck against teams from this state continues. Missouri State will also be part of the Marquette Invitational after losing to cross state rival Missouri in the first round of last year's national championship.

The Big East schedule kicks off on Friday, September 23rd, when MU visits Creighton. The Bluejays were Big East regular season and tournament champions a year ago and followed that up with a #16 national seed in the NCAA tournament. Big East action returns to the McGuire Center on Friday, September 30th, when Marquette hosts Georgetown. Senior Day is scheduled for Sunday, November 13th, as St. John's comes to town to wrap up the home end of the league slate.

Marquette will wrap up the regular season with a weekend trip to Butler and Xavier on November 18th and 19th, and hopefully they'll be back in Indianapolis the following weekend for the Big East tournament.

Here's the full schedule so you can make your scheduling plans as necessary.  Home games are in bold, because there is A LOT of games here.

You can check out the full press release from Marquette right here.