Best Start Ever: #19 Marquette 3, Butler 1

A lot of good and fun things happened at the McGuire Center on Saturday night.

1. #19 Marquette volleyball defeated Butler, 3-1
2. The win moved Marquette to 11-1 on the season, which is the best start to a season since the program joined Division 1 in 1986.
3. The win also moved Marquette to 2-0 in Big East play and kept the Golden Eagles in first place in the league. MU is now sharing first place with Seton Hall and St. John’s, who are both 2-0, along with Creighton and Xavier to a certain extent who are 1-0 after Friday night’s action.
4. The win extended Marquette’s winning streak to nine straight matches as well as keeping MU a perfect 8-0 at home this season.
5. Sophomore setter Yadhira Anchante posted a career high 10 kills along with 46 assists and 13 digs for her first NCAA triple-double.
6. Butler scored just eight points in the third set, marking the first time this season that an opponent failed to crack double digits against the Golden Eagles.

I like good and fun things.

It looked like Marquette was going to speed through Butler as the first set went along. A 7-3 lead turned into 11-5, and then late, Marquette ripped off six straight points to go up 21-10 on their way to a 25-12 win. That sensation wore off early in the second as the Golden Eagles couldn’t get their act together. Butler took a couple of early three point leads, forcing Marquette to score four straight to tie it at 13 and then three straight to tie it at 17. The Bulldogs responded with five of the next six points, and while MU was able to get within one at 23-22, kills from Amina Shackelford and Megan Sheridan informed everyone that this wouldn’t be a sweep.

Marquette apparently took that personally, jumping out to a 6-0 lead in the third set. The lead boomed to nine at 12-3 and then 19-5 on a kill by Jenna Reitsma. As you probably remember, this is the third set where BU only managed eight points by the end. Even with that being the case, Marquette scored six of the final seven points of the set on the way to a 25-8 win.

It was 3-1 and 5-2 in MU’s favor early in the fourth, but the Golden Eagles couldn’t quite put their arms around controlling that set. The Bulldogs would tie it up at 11 and then a 6-0 run on their end of things made it 17-13. That’s definitely not what Marquette wanted to see after rolling through Butler in the third, but it is what happened. That woke Marquette up, though. They answered with a 7-0 run that turned into 10-1 and then 12-2 as Ella Holmstrom laid down the set and match winning kill at 25-19 in the fourth set.

Anchante maybe had the best overall night, but Jenna Reitsma had a match high 13 kills and hit .367 to go with 15 digs on the night. Aubrey Hamilton also posted a double-double on 11 kills and 11 digs, while Ella Foti had a very good 10 digs to go next to her seven kills. Still, it was Carly Skrabak leading MU’s reception play with 19 of the team’s 79 digs on the night.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?

Up Next: Marquette still has two matches left on their current 10 match homestand! They’ll have a pair of home dates next weekend to wrap it up. First up is Connecticut (6-7, 0-2 Big East), with start time set for 7pm Central, while the match against Providence (8-6, 0-2 Big East) on Saturday, October 1, will start at 6pm Central.