Marquette women’s volleyball beat Villanova for the eighth consecutive time Friday in a sweep, 25-16, 25-17, 25-23. Marquette is now 15-5 on the year and 6-2 in the Big East.
Sophomore Autumn Bailey again lead all players in kills with 21 and two aces, and added nine blocks in the victory. She finished the match with .419 hitting percentage. Senior Lindsey Gosh had seven kills of her own and freshman Gabby Benda had 28 assists. Claire Crutchfield led Villanova in scoring with nine kills. Coach Ryan Theis was pleased with Bailey’s performance in the first set.
“She seems to be stringing together 20-point games lately,” Theis said. “In the first everything she touched turned to gold.”
The first set was a game of runs with Marquette ultimately coming out on top 25-16. Marquette got out to an early 6-2 lead, but Villanova responded with a 6-3 run to cut the Golden Eagle lead to one. But that was as close as the Wildcats got. Marquette responded with a 9-1 streak of its own, establishing an insurmountable lead. Bailey had a ridiculous 10 kills with no errors on 14 attempts in the set, including the set-winning point. Marquette had a red hot team hitting percentage of .515 in the set.
The second set was a much different story. Villanova came out strong and made phenomenal plays in the backcourt to keep the ball alive. The Wildcats and Golden Eagles matched each other point for point until Marquette pulled out a 3-0 run, giving the team a 12-9 lead. ‘Nova called a timeout to try to slow the Marquette offense down, but had little effect. Marquette kept the pressure on with an 8-3 streak, pushing the Wildcats on their heels and eventually leading to a 25-17 victory. Bailey came back down to earth after her first set, scoring four kills and an ace, and got assistance from Gosh, who added three kills of her own.
Marquette came out hot in the third set and earned a quick 10-5 lead, but ‘Nova would not go down easily. The Wildcats crawled their way back from a 15-9 deficit and tied the game 19-19 with the help of three straight Marquette attack errors. The game was back and forth from there. The Golden Eagles scored three straight and looked to end the match quickly, but ‘Nova responded with a 3-0 run of its own, forcing a timeout from Theis. After the timeout, Marquette would score three of the next four points, including a rocket from Bailey to close the match. Bailey had six kills and an ace in the set. Theis said he thought his team could have played better in the third set and didn’t execute as well as they could have.
Marquette’s next match will be at 6 p.m. on Saturday at the Al McGuire Center against Creighton, who is undefeated in conference play at 8-0.
