No. 23 Marquette entered Saturday’s non-conference matchup against LSU looking for more than just its second win of the season at home.
Prior to the game, both teams wore Keep Showing Up shirts designed by Marquette alum Jenny Fischer as Marquette Athletics teamed up with Fischer’s Keep Showing Up initative to bring awarness to suicide prevention awareness and mental health.
“It was awesome, I think it’s great that LSU participated and showed their support as well,” senior libero Carly Skrabak said. “It was awesome that we were able to do that and see the initiative that we took.”
On the court, the Golden Eagles took down the Tigers in four sets (25-19, 25-16, 20-25 and 25-14) securing its second win over an SEC opponet this season,
“We’re still not doing a phenomenal job of stringing together consistent good play, it’s off and it’s on and the start of third sets are driving me nuts,” head coach Ryan Theis said. “But hopefully we can figure that out and get more consistent as the season goes on.”
Both sides battled through much of the first set but LSU took a 14-12 lead at the midway point forcing Theis to call a timeout. After the timeout, the Golden Eagles went on an 8-0 run to take a six-point lead and did not look back taking the frame 25-19.
“It was big in terms of momentum shifting and certainly put pressure back on them,” Theis said. “Probably hurt their confidence a bit after they got off to a pretty good start.”
Similarly to the first stanza, the second frame had more back-and-forth action. The Tigers tied the match 11-11 on a 3-0 run of their own, but the Golden Eagles stormed back with a 4-0 run to take a 15-11 advantage. Marquette was able to then break open the set highlighted by a 10-4 run to take a 2-0 match lead.
The Tigers seemed like a completly opposite team in the third set, getting out to a 8-3 lead. Though Marquette creept into LSU’s lead late in the stanza, the Tigers held kept their advantage scoring the final three of the five points to win it 25-20.
LSU hit .515 in the set behind 18 kills on 33 swings with just one attack error. The Tigers also had four blocks and two aces.
“They were lights out, I thought they handled the ball way better, setters put them in good spots and they not only took big swings,” Theis said. “They were also able to tip and score as well because of how often their setter was at the net. I don’t think we got them out of system enough.”
It was Golden Eagle domination once again in the final set. The Golden Eagles’ offense used another extended 5-1 run to take a 17-10 before putting the set away on a block from sophomore Yadhira Anchante and junior Carsen Murray.
Overall, in the match, Marquette hit .289 and got eight service aces, while limiting LSU to just a .230 and three service errors. The Tigers also had 12 service errors, compared to the Golden Eagles five for the game.
Skrabak led the way for the Golden Eagles on the service line as she got four of the eight total service aces for Marquette on the day. She also added 18 digs without a reception error.
“I was just making sure I was putting my setters in a good place to execute to set our hitters up,” Skrabak said. “I don’t remember the last time I got that many service aces, but I just think that being confident in my serves really helped that and then passing the ball well when I was served the ball.”
Junior outside hitter Aubrey Hamilton led Marquette in kills with 15 to go along with eight digs and a service ace.
After being held without a kill in Tuesday’s game, sophomore outside hitter Jenna Reitsma rebounded Saturday finishing third on the team in kills (10) while also contributing four total blocks and six digs.
“She’s a little nicked up, we didn’t play her front row (on Tuesday) so we really didn’t give her opportunities to get kills on Tuesday, so it was nice to have her back out there controlling the ball.” Theis said.
Meanwhile, the Tigers were led by Hannah Jacobs who had 11 kills and hit .292% for the match.
The Golden Eagles (5-1) will look to go 2-0 this weekend tomorrow as they host cross-town rival UW-Milwaukee at 1 pm CST.
“They’re running a 6-2 (formation), with multiple people who can score, so they’re passing the ball well, they got plenty of fire power,” Theis said. “Hopefully they’re not passing it well (on Sunday) or we have a good service day, so we don’t have to worry about it as much.”
This article was written by Jackson Gross. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @JacksonGrossMU.
