Marquette Volleyball Announces The 2022 Schedule

Officially, the 2021-22 athletic calendar is not over for Marquette. High jumper Lindsey Mirkes has an NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Regional to compete in this weekend to keep the season going a little bit longer.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t start preparing for the 2022-23 athletic calendar! With that in mind, Marquette volleyball and head coach Ryan Theis announced their 2022 schedule on Wednesday afternoon.

It’s a home heavy schedule for the Golden Eagles this coming fall, as 16 of their scheduled 28 regular season games will be at the McGuire Center. That includes a streak of 10 straight matches at home between Tuesday, September 6 and Saturday, October 1. That streak wraps up with the first four contests of the Big East calendar, and this year, Marquette will play 10 of their 18 conference contests at home as they attempt to win a second straight regular season title.

The season won’t start at home, though, as Marquette’s first four matches will be on the road. They start off the season visiting Kentucky in a return for last year’s game in Milwaukee. The Wildcats wrapped up last season ranked #14 in the country after reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament. They’ll stay in Lexington for a second match, which will be against Ohio University. Yes, that’s the same Ohio University that once employed Ryan Theis as head coach and new MU assistant coach Ryan Walthall as Theis’ assistant. One of the players on those Bobcats teams? New MU assistant coach Abby Gilleland.

Weekend #2 of the season sends Marquette just a little bit to the west for a road match against reigning national champions Wisconsin. I presume that the Golden Eagles will stay in Madison to play High Point two days later as opposed to caravaning back and forth to Milwaukee.

That brings us to the 10 game homestand, which starts on Tuesday, September 6, with a match against Loyola Chicago. LSU and Milwaukee will come to the McGuire Center the following weekend, before upstate rival Green Bay makes their way to Milwaukee on Tuesday, September 13th. After that, it’s Illinois and Illinois State to wrap up non-conference action, and that could be a crucial weekend for the Golden Eagles. Both the Illini and the Redbirds made the NCAA tournament last season, with Illinois advancing all the way to the Sweet 16.

A home date with DePaul starts off Big East play on September 21st as MU plays the Blue Demons, Butler, UConn, and Providence at home before playing a league match on the road. The next four are all on the road, including the first of two matches against long time conference rival and 2021 Big East co-champ Creighton. The Golden Eagles will alternate two home/two road for the rest of the season, including wrapping up the regular season by hosting the Bluejays on Saturday, November 19th. Get your tickets for that one as soon as you can, as it is extremely likely that the Big East regular season championship will be determined one way or another on that night.

In case you were wondering, MU has two Big East opponents that they will only play once each this season. That will be Georgetown and Villanova, and their visits to Milwaukee as the first two games of November is how Marquette gets to 10 home games against eight road games in league play this season.

2022 will be a very interesting season for Ryan Theis and the Golden Eagles. On top of Theis replacing both of his long time assistant coaches since last season came to an end, Marquette will be without their top three point getters from last year’s NCAA tournament team and #4 on that list — Hannah Vanden Berg — missed the last seven matches of the season with a knee injury. Theis is also looking at replacing both halves of his setting duo, one of the top two defensive specialists, and the best blocker on the team. I don’t think I’m stepping too far out of pocket to say that this non-conference schedule certainly doesn’t look as daunting as some of the non-conference schedules that Theis has assembled in the recent past.

We’ll have to wait and see if this will all be enough to get the Golden Eagles back to the NCAA tournament.

Here’s the entire 2022 schedule!