Marquette volleyball knew who on St. John’s it would have to stop to win on Friday night.
Erin Jones.
The right side with the 2nd most triple-doubles in NCAA Division I volleyball. The Swiss army knife who came into the match 13 digs from becoming the first active player to hit the 1,000-mark in kills, digs and assists. The senior the Golden Eagles limited to four kills and five errors on 19 attacks (hitting -0.053%) in the teams’ first matchup in October.
It’s safe to say mission accomplished for the Golden Eagles (14-9, 8-5 Big East), who again forced Jones to hit negative in the 3-0 win (25-21, 21-15, 25-17) over the Red Storm (8-18, 4-9) at the Al McGuire Center. By the end of the sweep, Jones’ stat sheet read as such: two kills, three errors, 13 attacks, -0.077 hitting percentage. Marquette first-year setter Isabela Haggard had more kills than Jones (4-3).
“If you can do that,” Marquette head coach Tom Mendoza said, “you’re at a pretty good point.”
“Pretty good” indeed.
Jones didn’t record a single kill until the ninth point of the second frame. It took fifty-five points to change her goose egg in the kills section of the box score to one, finishing the opening set with three errors.
“We go into it just being ready for anything that she gets,” middle blocker Hattie Bray said. “We’re locking it down. She’s not getting past us.”
But the Golden Eagles’ defense did not stop with Jones, they limited the entire Red Storm team.
Marquette finished with 10 total blocks to St. John’s’ six. The blue & gold limited the red & white to hitting .094, never eclipsing a .200 hitting percentage in any of the three sets — .024 in the first, .125 in the second and .174 in the third. The Red Storm’s 23 attack errors were 13 more than the Golden Eagles.
“The first set, our offense wasn’t really clicking yet, but we were able to still disrupt them for all three sets,” Mendoza said. “And so that allowed us to side out in transition.”
Natalie Ring finished with her essentially inevitable double-digit kills, a streak that’s gone on for 25 matches and dates back almost one entire year, Nov. 30, 2024. Haggard led with 26 assists and libero Adriana Studer posted 16 digs. Bray reached 1,000 career kills, a feat she fell a couple short of in high school, but made right that wrong Friday night.
“Going into the game, everyone on the team knew that I needed to get seven kills to hit 1,000 and so everyone was watching the stat board,” Bray said. “I didn’t even know when I got six. It was the end of my rotation, I came out, and everyone’s like, shaking me like, ‘One more.'”
But the story of the sweep was the Golden Eagles’ defense, limiting both Jones and everyone else in a red jersey.
“Across the board, we’ve been really working in practice on making sure that our block is fronting the hitter and we’re taking away the hard, driven angles,” Bray said. “So I think tonight was a good show of what we’ve been working on and exactly what we can do.
“What Marquette volleyball looks like.”
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.
