The Marquette women’s volleyball team’s trip to the East Coast this weekend was quite successful. On Friday, the Golden Eagles beat St. John’s 3-2 (23-25, 25-14, 25-19, 30-32, 15-8) and then defeated Seton Hall (25-8, 21-25, 25-17) Saturday.
Taylor Louis and Jenna Rosenthal led the way for Marquette. Louis recorded a combined 44 kills on the weekend, while also getting her fifth double-double of the season against Seton Hall. Rosenthal had a career-high 16 blocks against St. John’s to go along with eight kills. She tacked on another 10 blocks versus Seton Hall.
“When those two girls have it going they control our points,” Marquette head coach Ryan Theis said. “Jenna obviously proved that from blocking this weekend.”
Senior setter Sara Blasier also added a combined 86 assists over the weekend.
Marquette struggled against St. John’s in two sets, but they were ultimately able to win the match.
“They were really good in game one. Really low error, very physical. They are a really physical team,” Theis said. “I think St. John’s is good and they are young, they are going to be good for years to come. Other than game one, I thought they played great and then game four we lost the ability to kill the ball. We couldn’t find the floor, missed a couple of serves and we just kind of let them back in the door, which you don’t want to do on the road, but fortunately in game five we had enough left to get out to an early lead.”
Despite hitting .364, the Golden Eagles got off to a slow start against St. John’s by losing the first set 25-23.
The second set went much differently. Marquette hit .524 and only had two errors as they cruised to a 25-14 win.
With the score tied at 12-12 in the third set, two of Louis’ kills and several St. John’s errors allowed Marquette to go on a 6-0 run, but St. John’s refused to go away. They responded with four unanswered points before Allie Barber finished the set off with a kill.
St. John’s and Marquette battled in the fourth set. With the score at 30 all, a Marquette error and St. John’s kill secured the set for St. John’s.
Marquette jumped out to a 7-3 lead in the fifth set before taking the set 15-8.
The Golden Eagles were overbearing in the first set versus Seton Hall, holding the Pirates to a -.189 hitting percentage and taking the set by a wide margin of 25-8.
A major point of emphasis in game planning for Seton Hall was to keep the ball away from senior libero Tessa Fournier. Marquette dropped the second set largely in part because Fournier was a force on defense.
“Their libero had 21 digs after the first two games and our game plan was to let her touch the ball as little as possible, so we were failing miserably in our game plan from that perspective,” Theis said.
At halftime, Theis talked to his team about avoiding Fournier. Through the next two sets, she had only four digs.
“When you are in situations where you don’t think you could kill it or score immediately, it is about attacking the ball to different areas of the court,” Theis said. “When you get in a bad situation that puts stress on you. In that stress you do what your comfort zone is or you do what the game plan is. We were just doing too much of our comfort zone because she was getting a lot of touches instead of doing what the game plan was. I think we did a much better job of that in three and four.”
Marquette opened the third set on a 9-4 run. They then extended the lead to 15-6 behind three kills from Madeline Mosher. The Golden Eagles won the set 25-14 with the final two kills coming from Mosher.
The Pirates had no answer for Marquette in the fourth set as they went on to win 25-17.
The Golden Eagles welcome Butler to the Al McGuire Center on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
