Marquette volleyball took down DePaul 3-0 (25-21, 25-20, 25-17) Saturday night at the Al McGuire Center.
“Any conference win that we can get is a big deal,” middle hitter Megan Niemann said. “Tonight gets us one closer to the BIG EAST tournament.”
Taylor Louis led the charge for the Golden Eagles with 13 kills, while Niemann recorded 10 and Jenna Rosenthal recorded nine.
“Every team we scout what their weaknesses are and those guys aren’t great at defending middles, so we knew that we could get some tonight,” Niemann said. … “Last time we went down there, Jenna had a lot of success on the slide. She was very very good last time when we went to DePaul and I wasn’t that good. Coming into tonight I knew that I had put a lot of work into hitting my slides and it gave me some confidence throughout the week and it came out tonight.”
Heading into Saturday’s match, DePaul was second in the BIG EAST in serving aces with an average of 1.44 serving aces per set. Marquette ended up with seven aces, while DePaul finished with five.
“Our passes were really dialed in,” Niemann said. “These guys are one of the best serving teams in the league. When we went there, once again, we didn’t pass great, so tonight was kind of a revenge, they got out there, got after it and got some nice passing for us.”
Marquette and DePaul opened up the first set neck and neck. The Golden Eagles were finally able to break away towards the end of the set. With the score tied 17-17, Marquette went on an 8-4 run to close out the set 25-21. Jenna Rosenthal, who went a perfect 5-for-5, highlighted the set.
The second set was similar to the first in that both teams stayed close. The Golden Eagles were able to create a 20-16 lead, which led to a DePaul timeout. Following the timeout, Marquette seemed to be in control of the set, but DePaul kept preventing them from creating a big lead. The Golden Eagles were eventually able to finish the set 25-20.
“Clearly we want to give DePaul some credit, but at times we were our own worst enemy in all three games,” Marquette head coach Ryan Theis said. “We had moments where someone would make two to three bad decisions or poor touches on a ball that led to immediate chaos and I think that helped keep it tight. So, at times at I think we were our own worst enemy.”
Defense led the way in the third set, as the Golden Eagles held DePaul to just a .069 hitting percentage. With the score 17-16 in favor of Marquette, the Golden Eagles finished out the set on a 8-1 run, which included two service aces one from Lauren Speckman and another from Manon Geoffroy.
“I thought we finally got some quality block touches instead of them hitting it off of our hands,” Theis said. “I thought through the first two sets they did a good job of hitting off of us. We call that basically undigable ball, when they hit off our hands and nobody has a chance to play it and I think those went away in the third.”
Marquette will host Seton Hall next Saturday at 3:00 and St. John’s this Sunday at 1:00.
