The wheels came off for the Marquette women’s volleyball team last weekend, which is still searching for its first Big East victory. The Golden Eagles came up empty in road matches against Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

“We were clearly disappointed with the weekend and I think shell-shocked is the right word,” coach Bond Shymansky said. “When you’re playing on the road in the Big East it’s always a big challenge and our team kind of got caught in quicksand a little bit. The more we struggled the deeper we sunk.”

Marquette did not have trouble getting off to good starts, leading 13-6 in the first set against Pittsburgh and 17-13 in the first set against West Virginia. Finishing off that first set is a different story. Marquette would go on to drop the first set against the Panthers, falling into a deep hole.

“Our biggest struggle right now is that when our passing goes cold, it goes ice cold,” Shymansky said. “When you’re on the road and you’re not passing well, nobody else is supporting you or cheering you on and we’re still a young team learning how to respond in those moments.”

The hitting was underwhelming this weekend, especially against Pittsburgh, where Marquette hit a lowly .187 as a team.

“When the wheels came off this weekend, they came all the way off,” Shymansky said. “There were a few individual bright spots but they weren’t enough to carry our team.”

Sophomore Ashley Beyer led the team with 32 kills in the two matches, a career-high 24 of them coming against West Virginia. Junior Leslie Bielski notched 29 kills of her own while setter Nikki Klingsporn recorded 88 assists over the two matches.

“We just have to demand more out of ourselves and out of our team,” Klingsporn said. “We’re pretty upset after that and we hate losing. We want to prove how hard we have been working.”

Hitting errors were also a thorn in the team’s side. Marquette committed 19 hitting errors against the Panthers and 29 against the Mountaineers.

Shymansky understands the importance of solid hitting and realizes that too many errors will cost his team matches in the weeks to come.

“Hitting errors a lot of times are born out of fear, that you’re afraid to get blocked and therefore you swing to avoid the block and that’s a bad mental place to be,” Shymansky said. “Hitters ended up avoiding the block and making a lot of errors out of bounds so that’s just about tenacity and aggressiveness and we need to learn that.”

The Golden Eagles will now have an uphill battle to get back in the race for a Big East championship.

“Patience is going to be a strong virtue for our team this year,” Shymansky said. “We feel like we’ve made great strides already but we’re clearly one step forward, two steps back at this point.”

With two home matches coming up, Marquette is looking forward to playing in the comforts of the Al McGuire Center for the first time since Sept. 13.

“We’re a better team than an 0-2 start shows,” sophomore Alexandra Coello said. “We’re ready to work really hard in practice to prove that in our upcoming matches.”