Marquette Volleyball Announces 2017 Schedule

On Thursday, Marquette volleyball announced their 2017 schedule. This came as a little bit of a surprise, as it is about a month earlier than last year’s schedule, but hey: when it’s done, it’s done.

As usual, MU’s home schedule will consist of the nine Big East matches along with the Marquette Invitational. The guests for the Invitational this year are Kentucky, which is coming off a second round appearance in the NCAA tournament in 2016, as well as Loyola-Chicago.

The Golden Eagles will participate in two non-conference tournament events to kick off the season. They’ll be in Hawaii to start off the schedule, where they will play the Rainbow Wahine along with UCLA and San Diego. That’s going to be one hell of a start to the season, as all three of those squads were ranked in the top 15 of the AVCA poll at the end of the season.

From there, Marquette will move to Indianapolis the following weekend for a tournament hosted by IUPUI. In addition to the Jaguars, MU will also play Miami (OH) and Wichita State. Both the Redhawks and the Shockers were NCAA tournament teams a year ago, so it won’t be much of a letdown in competition level from the previous week for head coach Ryan Theis and his team.

Following the Marquette Invitational, the Golden Eagles will meet up with two of their in-state rivals. They’ll visit UW-Milwaukee, and then follow that up just two days later with a trip to Madison to play the Badgers. It will be the first meeting between Marquette and Wisconsin since 2008, and given how the Badgers have played the past few seasons, it should be a pretty important match.

After sticking around in Madison for another day to tangle with Southern Miss, Marquette will open up Big East action on September 20th with a road trip to Butler. The home slate for league play gets started on September 22nd when Seton Hall rolls into town, and Manon Geoffroy’s Senior Day (yes, she’s on the only one on the roster this year) will be on November 11th when MU hosts Villanova at the McGuire Center.

Speaking of the McGuire Center, Marquette will host the Big East tournament again in 2017, with the semifinals set for Friday, November 24th, aka the day after Thanksgiving, and the championship match scheduled for the very next day.

With the recently announced group of signees, Marquette will have eight newcomers on the roster in the fall, including seven freshmen. I think this quote from Ryan Theis in the press release does a good job of explaining the task in front of the Golden Eagles for 2017:

"We have an extremely challenging non-conference schedule," Theis said. "We will have to get our group ready to compete in a hurry. We will be battle tested by the time we start BIG EAST play and we are excited to have the conference tournament back at Marquette in November. Our goal is to get another shot at December and make the most of it."

Here’s the full schedule for you.