The Creighton volleyball team hit at a white-hot .397 clip for the match, and four Bluejays had at least seven kills in a 25-19, 25-19, 25-18 sweep of the Arkansas Razorbacks on Friday night in the second match of the 2015 Creighton Classic at D.J. Sokol Arena.
Creighton (5-6) never trailed the Razorbacks (8-2) by more than two points at any time during the match. In fact, after a falling behind 14-12 in the second set, the Bluejays scored six of the next seven points and did not trail again the rest of the match. Junior outside hitter Jess Bird led Creighton with 10 kills, followed by nine kills each from junior middle blocker Lauren Smith and sophomore right side hitter Marysa Wilkinson. True freshman Jaali Winters also added seven kills.
The power-hitting quartet gave sophomore setter Kenzie Crawford a host of weapons to choose from during the match.
“From right off the bat I could tell that a lot of people were getting going,” Crawford said. “I think we took the losses from Pacific and Nebraska, and we came into practice, worked hard, and I think we came in tonight with more swagger and just really went out and hit the ball hard.”
Crawford chipped in three kills herself, and led the team with seven digs, but it was her 32 assists and the way she spread out the sets that made the difference for Creighton’s offense during the match.
“Kenzie really distributed the ball well. If you look at our set distribution it’s 16, 14, 18, 14, 11, I mean that is beautiful as far as parity goes. Especially because we think one of our strengths is we’ve got weapons all over the place,” Creighton head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said, referring to the amount of attacks taken by Winters, Wilkinson, Bird, Smith, and true freshman outside hitter Taryn Kloth.
“Obviously the way to take advantage of that is to move the ball around. I think that was key from our perspective,” Booth added.
The offensive efficiency the Bluejays put on display was made more impressive by the fact that Arkansas entered the match ranked 10th in the country with a .120 opponent’s hitting percentage. Creighton’s .480 hitting percentage in the first set was the highest against the Razorbacks all season, and their .423 clip in the match-clinching third set was good for the third-highest mark that Arkansas had allowed through their first nine matches this season.
Arkansas also ranked 10th in the nation offensively, sporting a .297 hitting percentage as a team prior to facing Creighton. The Bluejays, however, held them to just .192 hitting thanks to a strong presence at the net led by Lauren Smith and a serve/receive game that produced five aces and kept the Razorbacks out of system all night.
“I thought our serving, especially from a blocking standpoint, really took major hitters out of the equation,” Smith said. “We were able to stay locked in in the front row.”
Smith, who entered the match with a team-high 42 total blocks, added six more to her season total in the win, and despite the fact that Arkansas’ junior outside hitter Pilar Victoria led all players with 18 kills, her 33 swings were three times as many as the next most by a Razorback hitter. With Smith’s blocking at the net combined with Creighton serve/receive game, the Razorbacks had a hard time getting anyone else into a rhythm.
“We won the serve and pass game, we took them out of system, and we neutralized them,” Booth said. “Chanell Clark-Bibbs had been hitting off the charts, and she didn’t get a lot of sets. Breana Jones was a terror on the film we watched, and she got three swings all night. I think our serving really neutralized them.”
Another key to the victory according to the Creighton coach was her team’s ability to sustain runs at crucial times throughout the match. In the first set, they used a 5-1 run early on to create some separation, then later went on a 7-2 run to put the first game out of reach. In the second game, a 4-0 run early broke a 5-5 tie, then after Arkansas took a 14-12 lead, the Bluejays responded with an 8-2 run to build a big enough advantage that allowed them to put the first two games in their back pocket before intermission. In the third set, they led from start to finish, but a 7-0 run midway through broke the game wide open and made it clear that an Arkansas comeback was not in the cards tonight.
Those runs kept the momentum on Creighton’s side of the net for the majority of the match, and was another reason that Arkansas could not get into any sort of a groove offensively.
“We talk about runs a lot. It’s definitely a priority that when we go behind the line to serve we want to be scoring points,” Booth said. “The idea is that you never just go and give them the opportunity to sideout. It’s such a momentum boost. I thought one thing we did well tonight was we’d serve and make them earn the point out. We talk a lot about how scoring two points, then making a service error just takes them off the hook, and I thought overall we did a nice job of keeping pressure on them, and allowing ourselves to go on some long runs.”
Next up for Creighton is an 11th-ranked Wisconsin team that has won seven matches in a row, and 21 of the last 23 sets they’ve played in. The Badgers (7-1) won in four sets over Kansas State prior to the Creighton-Arkansas match. They are led by junior setter Lauren Carlini, who dropped in a match-high 53 assists to go along with 14 digs against the Wildcats in the opening match of the Creighton Classic. She will lead her team against Creighton in a 1:00 p.m. match at D.J. Sokol Arena on Saturday afternoon.
After that, the Bluejays will face Kansas State (8-2) on Sunday afternoon to wrap up the non-conference portion of their schedule, and while the Bluejays didn’t feel any extra pressure to add quality wins to their resume before this weekend, the convincing victory against the Razorbacks does put them in a much better position heading into their tussle with the talented Badgers.
“Desperation is not at all a word I would use to describe our situation entering this weekend,” Booth said. “I think there are some opportunities this weekend, and there is no question we want to build our resume, and we need to build our resume. It would be naive to say our resume would look great if we went 0-for-3 this weekend. The players get it. We educated them a lot on the process, but we’ve also talked a lot about continuing to get better every time — I’m a broken record on that, but I think they buy into that.”
“We are still a work in progress. We are not playing our best volleyball tonight, but that’s okay. We want to be playing our best volleyball in November. We want to win the Big East Tournament. But there is no question there are opportunities abound this weekend. We have two more phenomenal teams in front of us, and we need to go out and control what we can control, play to the best of our ability, and then let the chips fall. I think if we play at the level we are capable of, I think good things can happen for us.”
