So this is what a Hattie Bray-less Marquette volleyball looks like.
Aubrey Hamilton still killing, Yadhira Anchante still assisting, a great many people still digging, the Golden Eagles still sweeping.
Even without its 3-time All-Big East middle blocker, who suffered an ankle injury Sunday in the regular season finale, Marquette is still Marquette: a Big East brute that will punish anyone not named Creighton with an overwhelming offense and dogged defense.
The 6th seeded Villanova Wildcats were on the receiving end of that Friday night in the Big East tournament semifinals, as the No. 2 seed Golden Eagles secured a 3-0 victory (26-24, 25-14, 25-16).
Hamilton led the way with 18 kills on an efficient .405 hitting percentage (18-3-37). Anchante recorded her 19th double-double with a team-high 44 assists and 11 digs. Middle blocker Morgan Daugherty — in her first career start in lieu of Bray — upped the ante from Sunday with a new career-high nine kills on .600 hitting and Natalie Ring continued her career-best campaign with eight kills of her own. Marquette hit .336 as a team and posted 52 digs.
At the start, the answer to the question of what do the Bray-less Golden Eagles look like was a lot different than it was at the end.
Marquette was playing sloppy out of system, while not hitting effectively, with service errors galore — and anyone other than Hamilton was quiet as a mouse. The sluggish opening lasted so long that halfway through the first frame, the Wildcats still led 15-13 and the Golden Eagles had a lowly .107 hitting percentage.
The two programs would go tit-for-tat from there until the end, with Marquette head coach Ryan Theis calling his first timeout down 23-22. But Hamilton is going to Hamilton, and the outside hitter posted two kills immediately, all at once flipping the frame on its head, giving the Golden Eagles a 24-23 lead and forcing a Wildcats timeout.
It went to extra points but Marquette got the job done, 26-24, thanks to Hamilton’s 12th kill of the match.
The second frame may have started close, like the first, but once Ella Foti got to the line and dutifully applied service pressure, Marquette went on a 7-0 run to mark a 21-13 lead and a quickly-earned 25-14 win.
The Golden Eagles continued rolling in the third after turning a 7-5 lead to a 13-6 lead, forcing the Wildcats to call their first timeout. It took only four more points after that for Villanova to call its final of the set as Marquette led 16-7.
Those first set jitters were nothing more than first set jitters, and the Golden Eagles secured the sweep with three of the final four points, 25-16, to book their ticket to the Big East tournament finals Saturday, where they’ll face the No. 1 seed Bluejays.
5th ranked Creighton beat Marquette in four sets in the programs’ two regular season matches, but the Golden Eagles have a chance to get their revenge and win their first Big East tournament.
“We’re going to have to play a little bit cleaner tomorrow,” Theis said in a postgame interview. “We always say when you get it soft, you can’t return it soft. So when we got a free ball, we misconnected on a couple, and Creighton is not going to give you extra opportunities.
“So we do a drill to kill it quick. We try and be as efficient as we can, first time over, second time over. So we’ll need to be a little bit better at that tomorrow.”
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.
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