The Creighton volleyball team played their first full match without Kate Elman, but that didn’t stop them from earning their eighth sweep of the season with a 25-17, 25-15, 25-12 victory over the DePaul Blue Demons on Sunday afternoon at D.J. Sokol Arena.
Creighton barely trailed except for an early 4-3 deficit in the first set as they won the first game 25-17 over DePaul. Kelli Browning and Michelle Sicner led the way for the Bluejays. The pair combined for eight blocks to help hold the Blue Demons to a .121 attack percentage in the opening set. After falling behind, Sicner connected with Browning and Jess Bird to give Creighton a 5-4 lead. Later she set up Browning for the two-time All-American’s 1,000th career kill and then a combo block to make it 9-6.
“I didn’t even know that was a thing,” Browning said of being the 10th Creighton player to reach 1,000 kills. “That was cool to find out. A total tribute to the team. I couldn’t hit it if I didn’t have a set or a pass, so it reflects on how strong of a team we have.”
The Blue Demons kept the set within three points until a 7-0 run by Creighton extend the lead to 22-12 and put DePaul out of reach. Browning finish the first game with four kills and five blocks, while Sicner pitched in with 14 assists and three blocks of her own.
“I thought we blocked pretty well and followed the game plan,” head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “We had some specific things in rotations that we wanted to match up, and I actually was really impressed with that. When we thought they were going to run a three, our right sides did a good job helping. We were watching how a kid specifically transitioned and I thought our blockers really did a nice job. We have a cerebral team that will lock in to things like that and can effectively shut some players down when they do that.”
The Creighton block looked even stronger in the second set. Though the Bluejays nearly the whole time, DePaul still kept it close just as they did in the first game, but a combo block by Browning and Sicner pushed the Creighton lead to 14-11. Later, two straight combo blocks by Sicner and Lauren Smith capped a 9-2 run that helped the Bluejays pull away and head to the locker room with a 25-15 victory in the second set.
The third set was all Creighton and featured a contribution from practically every healthy body on the roster. With DePaul clinging to the hope that they could extend the match the Bluejays used an 11-0 run to turn a 9-7 lead into a 20-7 advantage. The key stretch included kills by six different Creighton players and two aces by Michelle Sicner who served the entire run.
Sicner, who finished with a season-high 36 assists and seven blocks, credited a pregame conversation between her and her hitters for the parity they showed on the court. “I just told them that we’re going to connect today, we’re going to get it done,” she said. “A lot of volleyball is mental, so when you have the mindset and everyone has the mindset it just clicks. I think we all had the mindset today that we wanted to, first of all win because it’s a big match for us, but also we wanted to get things clicking on offense.”
Kelli Browning finished off the match with two straight kills to give her a match-high 13 kills to go along with her eight blocks, and also improve the Bluejays to 17-7 on the season, but more importantly improve the team to 10-1 and two games up in the Big East standings.
“It’s nice to be alone in first in conference, but at the same time we can’t let up now,” Browning said. “Now we gotta go.”
Creighton’s next match will be on Saturday, Nov. 1, when they host Georgetown at 6:00 p.m. at D.J. Sokol Arena. The Bluejays will be looking to finish off a five-game home stand with a perfect record before hitting the road for four straight matches against Xavier, Butler, Providence, and St. John’s.
Kate Elman Out 3-6 Weeks
Creighton libero Kate Elman was injured while diving for a dig late in the second set of the Bluejays’ win over Marquette on Friday night. She didn’t return after leaving the match and an x-ray later confirmed that she suffered a fractured radius in her right wrist. The original timetable for her recovery was reported as three-to-six weeks, but she has a visit on Monday that will provide more clarity.
“I go back on Monday for another x-ray with the Creighton doctors and a wrist specialist. I’ll get a new cast and they’ll see,” Elman said. “We’re hoping that since it was a clean break — no fragments, no displacements or anything — that it’ll be quicker healing, and I’m crossing my fingers that it will be three weeks and then I can play with a soft cast.”
Elman admits it will difficult sitting out after playing in 330 consecutive sets as the team’s libero to start her career. “I could play with the pain, but this is to prevent further damage. They want it to heal enough so that I can’t hurt it more.”
She says after seeing how the team responded against Marquette, she is confident they won’t skip a beat while she heals up, “It looked like it wasn’t anything. It looked like nothing fazed them,” Elman said about the way the Jays played after her injury. “They came out and they fought, and [Melanie Jereb] did a fantastic job, she really did. I think that’s what is great about our team is that we have so much parity on our bench that something minor like this is just a blip. There are a lot of people who can come off the bench right now and put in work that needs to be done. That’s what they did [on Friday]. I think that say a lot about our team in the face of adversity. A team is 16 players and 16 players is what it takes.”
