Marquette also lost a hard-fought five game match 2-3 (30-26, 31-33, 30-28, 24-30, 13-15) Friday night to Seton Hall, officially putting them out of contention for the Big East tournament.,”It was a swift finish to a disappointing conference season Sunday for the Marquette women's volleyball team. The Golden Eagles were blanked 3-0 (25-30, 31-33, 29-31) by Villanova at the Al McGuire Center.
Marquette also lost a hard-fought five-game match 2-3 (30-26, 31-33, 30-28, 24-30, 13-15) Friday night to Seton Hall, officially putting the team out of contention for the Big East tournament.
In the preseason Coach's Poll, Marquette was picked to finish fifth in the conference, but the Golden Eagles stumbled well short of that prediction, finishing in 11th place with a 5-9 record (8-16 overall).
Not making the conference tournament is especially troubling for Marquette considering the eight teams that will be competing will do so at the McGuire Center Friday through Sunday.
"It's disappointing," head coach Pati Rolf said. "A year ago we decided to host the Big East tournament and with the squad that we had there was a lot of optimism. You head through a summer where you lose three starters, it's pretty devastating for the team."
The three starters Rolf alluded to were Jamie Mueller, Monica Renfrow and sophomore Leslie Bielski, who is academically ineligible for this season.
This weekend's games marked the last conference matches for seniors Kim Todd, Katie Weidner, Jenn Brown and Tiffany Helmbrecht. Todd is currently second all-time in kills for Marquette with 1,647, trailing Theresa Coughlin by 86. She will need to put forth a strong effort to top that mark with just two non-conference matches remaining on the schedule.
This season, Todd led the Golden Eagles in kills in 12 of 14 conference matches. Perhaps in a symbolic, passing-of-the-torch sort of way, it was junior Ashlee Fisher who led Marquette with 17 kills and a .382 hitting percentage against Villanova.
"She's really buying into what the coaches are saying now," Todd said. "We all have our issues on the team, and we all work hard to get over them, and I think she's really done that this year. She's going to be a great leader next year."
After transferring to Marquette from Kentucky, Fisher attributed her maturation over the season to adjusting to her surroundings.
"I'm more comfortable with the team now; whereas in the beginning of the season, I hadn't really played with them, and now that I have, we all just kind of came together," Fisher said.
Marquette's 8-16 record is the lowest single-season win total of Rolf's 20-year career and was a disappointment for the team after last year's third place finish in the Big East.
"It's definitely saddening," Todd said. "We worked really hard, and we all wanted to be in the tournament this year. It's pretty tough that it's going to be at home and we're not going to be in it."
The Golden Eagles know they had their chances down the stretch with four of their last six matches going to five games, but they were unable to pull out even one of them.
"I just think we can't finish," Fisher said.
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