Yes, the jerseys were gold, but that was about it.
Neither the hitting, the defense nor the serving were as good as it needed to be — not in order to beat a Goliath.
No. 24 Marquette had to play near-perfect volleyball in its home opener against No. 5 Stanford in order to remain undefeated. Alas, the Golden Eagles (1-1) did not do enough, leading to a 3-0 sweep (18-25, 17-25, 22-25) at the hands of the Cardinal (4-0).
“I liked some things I saw from our offense, especially in the third, we hit like a .430. I thought we were rolling offensively — as well in the first up until about 17, when we gave up that point run. So I like some of the things we saw,” head coach Ryan Theis said.
“We stopped some first ball but we couldn’t get stops in transition, and we didn’t kill it particularly well in transition, and we didn’t serve particularly well.
“I think to beat a top five team, you had to serve a great match, and you had to have just about all five, six offensive players giving you at least 2-4 respective kills a game. We just couldn’t get everything going all at once to beat a team that good.”
The biggest disparity between the two teams was the serving. Marquette finished with zero aces to 10 errors, while Stanford had four aces to only eight errors.
Hitters Ipar Kurt, Ella Rubin and Jordyn Harvey led the Cardinal with 14, 12 and 11 kills respectively. Setter Kami Miner posted a double-double of 31 assists and 11 digs.
“Their setter is a two-time, first team All-American for a reason,” Theis said. “She can control the match pretty well from the setting position. I had never seen her play live in her Stanford career. She’s a pretty impressive player.”
Outside hitter Aubrey Hamilton was the only Golden Eagle to post double-digit kills (12), and Jenna Reitsma finished second on the team with nine.
As a team, Stanford hit .373 while Marquette posted a hitting percentage of .255 — thanks in large part to the third frame, when it hit a game-high .429.
“Good block vision, good touches. I thought they played clean behind the block,” Theis said about what made it hard to get going offensively. “I think the libero is really good.”
Like Theis said, the Golden Eagles were keeping pace with the Cardinal through most of the first set — until they weren’t.
Marquette had a 17-16 lead and had been trading points the entire frame when Stanford ripped off a 4-0 run, which prompted Ryan Theis to burn his final timeout of the frame. Out of the break, the Cardinal extended their streak to eight-straight points and closed the set on a Hamilton service error.
The second frame — just like the first — was back-and-forth until — just like the first — it wasn’t.
Stanford was able to piece together a 3-0 run to take a 15-9 lead, a deficit Marquette was unable to erase. The Cardinal went on to maintain their lead, only letting the Golden Eagles get as close as five before ending the set on three straight points.
They hit .343 in the frame, also holding Marquette to a match-low .105 hitting percentage.
Perhaps the only positive from the set for the Golden Eagles was the appearance of right side Ella Foti, who missed the season-opener at Eastern Illinois as she wasn’t fully healthy. She finished with one kill and two digs in two sets played.
“She’s working on it,” Theis said. “Fully healthy is a relative term. My calf’s bad, but I’m out here, so we’ll see. She’s getting better…
“We’ll have to see how she responds to everything from today and practices. She wants to be comfortable, so I’m just talking to her daily and seeing how she’s doing and what role she can help us with.”
While the third and final set was close until the end, it was too little too late for the Golden Eagles, ending in the sweep.
Overall, Stanford had the edge in kills (48-39), assists (44-36) and digs (48-40).
Marquette will play its second ranked match of the week Friday when it takes on No. 13 Kansas at 6 p.m. CST at the Al McGuire Center.
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.
