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Marquette volleyball dominated in the first and third sets and escaped with a come from behind win in the second to sweep DePaul, 3-0 (25-14, 27-25, 25-14), on Saturday afternoon. With the win, the #19 ranked Golden Eagles are now 14-4 overall and 5-1 in Big East play as we hit the one-third pole in the league schedule.
Look, let’s be honest: There’s not a whole lot to discuss about the first and third sets. Marquette won both by 11 points while hitting over .380 in each and holding DePaul under .150 in each. It was pretty much a runaway win for MU from front to back, so we’ll just accept that and move on.
The second set was a wholly different set of circumstances. Things started out as a back-and-forth affair through the first 18 points of the stanza. Two attack errors by Marquette followed by back-to-back kills from Avarie Evans-Allen, and suddenly Marquette was down 13-9. Shortly thereafter, back-to-back kills from Claire Anderson made the DePaul lead five points at 15-10. Seems bad.
Marquette responded with the next four points of the match, and seven of the next nine, and we were back to a tied game, all even at 17 each. DePaul kept cracking open two point leads, Marquette kept punching back. Finally, the Golden Eagles evened the set at 22 on an attack error, and again at 23 on a kill by Allie Barber. The next point came on a kill from Barber, and believe it or not, after all of this, Marquette had earned their way to set point.
It was not to be, though. At least not yet.
Kills from Anderson and Emma Price swung things back towards the Blue Demons, and at 25-24, Marquette was on the verge of getting their 10 set winning streak snapped. Barber rescued MU from the precipice of a set loss, and that was followed with a DePaul attack error and a service ace by Sarah Rose, and BOOM, 27-25 win. NEAT.
It’s a small thing, but it’s nice to see Marquette respond to a bit of adversity and battle back.
Jenna Rosenthal led Marquette in kills for the day with 11, while Barber had 10 of her own. MU got big days from their secondary attackers, with four more players recording at least six kills. The offense was tilted towards Lauren Speckman’s rotation on the floor in this one, as she had 21 assists against 14 for Rose.
In national ranking news, #17 UCLA lost to #20 Oregon over the weekend, so we’ll have to wait and see how that affects how the voters see #19 Marquette. Do #18 Kentucky, Marquette, and Oregon all slide up a spot while UCLA falls behind the Ducks? Do UCLA and Oregon flip spots? We’ll have to wait for Monday afternoon to find out.
Up Next: Marquette needs to clean up their mid-week series that they started this past week, so they’ll be back at home on Wednesday night to host Butler. The Bulldogs are 6-13 on the year, but 3-4 in league play after going 1-1 at home over the weekend against Georgetown and Villanova.