The 2011-’12 Marquette women’s volleyball team has set new standards for classes to come, finishing the season with its best-ever conference record, 12-2 in the Big East.

“I think we looked at last year’s season and said, ‘We’re breaking all these records, we’re setting these standards for our program,’ and this year we’re meeting and beating those standards,” coach Bond Shymansky said. “That’s a great thing for our program and that’s the whole idea. You get better and better and better as you go. You elevate your program’s status and your standards.”

The Golden Eagles downed Notre Dame (15-11, 8-6 Big East) in three straight sets on Friday and repeated the equation in Sunday’s match against DePaul (7-22, 3-11 Big East).

The Fighting Irish, ranked No. 2 in blocking in the Big East, struggled with their defensive net presence, tallying only five blocks compared to Marquette’s eight.

“I think a big part of the blocking schemes for us is really trying to focus on the correct attacker,” Shymansky said. “They (Notre Dame) had a couple really dynamic hitters, and I thought our blockers did a good job of staying on task.”

Senior outside hitter Ciara Jones finished the weekend with 32 kills. She had a career game against Notre Dame posting an unbelievable .739 hitting percentage, pummeling the Irish’s defense for 18 kills in 23 attempts.

“I just have to keep swinging,” Jones said. “Refocusing, I guess, is just to keep swinging, keep getting after it and just hit as hard as possible.”

Both Notre Dame and DePaul had drastically lower hitting percentages than the Golden Eagles. The Irish finished with a .125 attack percentage and the Blue Demons, even lower, with a .065 average.  Marquette holds the No. 2 spot in the Big East for hitting percentage at .254 overall.

Sunday, DePaul overcame that deficit slightly, using Marquette’s errors to its advantage. The Golden Eagles had a total of 11 serving errors to the Blue Demons’ one.

“The little lapses of focus, at times, they don’t really frustrate me,” Shymansky said. “I thought our attention and our interest in the match was still super high, even though our performance wasn’t flawless.”

Looking ahead to the Big East Championship tournament, senior outside hitter Ashley Beyer and Shymansky agreed the team will look to continue the same mentality.

“We know that it’s going to be tough. It’s a tournament, so we all know that we have to come out and give it our all,” Beyer said. “When we play our best and play as a team, then we are ridiculous.”

Although Beyer and Jones were honored during Sunday’s senior day, it was not the final game the two will ever play at the Al McGuire Center, as Marquette hosts the tournament this weekend.

“A simple way to say it is we’ve got our ‘mojo’ right now, and we intend to keep it as we go into Big East play,” Shymansky said.

The Golden Eagles are the No. 3 seed and will host Seton Hall Friday at 6 p.m. to kick off the postseason.