No. 25 Marquette picked up their fifth straight win of the season Saturday afternoon defeating Ohio University (25-19, 25-18, 25-15) at Redbird Arena.
“Carsen Murray and Ellie Koontz stepped it up offensively today for us,” head coach Ryan Theis said in a statement.“Our passers, Carly Skrabak, Katies Schoessow and Hope Werch, had a lot of good first touches to help get the offense going.”
For Theis and assistant coach Megan Keck, this was the first time they squared up against their former stop since Theis took the helm at MU in 2014.
Marquette jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, forcing Ohio to burn an early timeout.
Following the timeout, the Bobcats responded with a 3-0 run to bring it within one. After MU took a 10-6 lead, OU put another run together to tie the game up. Redshirt first-year Carsen Murray ended the set for MU with a kill.
Five different Golden Eagles — Hope Werch, Taylor Wolf, Savannah Rennie, Ellie Koontz and Murray — finished with two or more kills in the opening frame to give MU the 25-19 set win.
Theis would burn an early time out of his own in set two after Ohio went out to a 7-3 lead. After the Bobcats tied it up at 13, the Golden Eagles finished the set on a 12-5 run to take the set 25-18.
Ohio hit -.054 in set two while Marquette hit .188.
Marquette hopped out to an 11-7 lead in the third set prompting Ohio to call another timeout. The Golden Eagles would not look back from there, securing the 25-12 set win to complete the three-set sweep.
Rennie finished with five kills and three blocks in the closing set. As a team, MU hit .464 in the frame.
Wolf and redshirt junior setter Claire Mosher finished with 15 assists on the afternoon. Rennie finished with a team-high nine kills while Murray added seven of her own.
Marquette’s defense finished with nine blocks and limited Ohio to a season low .065 hitting percentage.
Werch ended the match with four kills. She is now seven kills away from becoming the 13th player in program history to record 1,000 career kills.
Next up for Marquette (5-0) will be Illinois State Sunday at 1 p.m. CST to conclude the Red & White Invitational. The game can be streamed on ESPN+.
This story was written by Ben Schultz. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @benschultz52.
