Since 1994, the Creighton volleyball team is 2-65 at home when they drop the first two sets. Both of those wins have occurred in the last 19 days. On September 20th, the Bluejays rallied from an 0-2 deficit to beat Kansas State in the finale of the Creighton Classic, and on Friday night against DePaul they did it again to improve to 12-7 on the season and 6-0 in Big East conference play.
The first set saw 13 ties and six lead changes before DePaul (12-6, 1-5) scored seven of the final 10 points to turn an 18-18 tie into a 25-21 first-set victory. The Blue Demons were hitting below .200 at one point in the seesaw first game, but found a rhythm and finished the set with a .361 attack percentage. DePaul freshman right side hitter Brittany Maxwell led all players with six kills in the first set, four of which came on her team’s final five points of the set.
DePaul’s hitting cooled off considerably in the second set, but the Creighton’s passing issues prevented them from capitalizing. The Bluejays produced a sideout on only 12 of DePaul’s 24 serves in the second game.
“I just don’t think we were playing Creighton Volleyball,” senior setter Maggie Baumert said. “We weren’t serving and passing, and that’s how we win matches.”
As she has done a few times this season to try to spark her team, head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth inserted Baumert into the match midway through the second set, but it didn’t pay off right away. Creighton led 22-20 late in the set, but two attack errors and a service ace by DePaul junior setter Colleen Smith helped the Blue Demons take a 24-22 lead and earn set point. After a service error by Smith, it was Maxwell again finishing off Creighton with a kill.
Maxwell led all players with 18 kills for the match, but the ones at the end of games one and two helped to send the visiting Blue Demons into the locker room with a 2-0 lead in front of a stunned crowd of 1,471 at D.J. Sokol Arena.
With the comeback win against Kansas State still fresh in their minds, the Bluejays weren’t about to roll over and move on to Marquette.
“Being down 0-2 was a huge gut check, but I heard one of our players, I think it was Maggie, in the locker room say that we’ve been in this situation before,” Booth said. “We’d been down to Kansas State 0-2, and I think you talk about that, you know you can come back. It was good to see the team in that locker room saying, ‘we’ve been in this situation, we know how to handle it’, but it’s tough to come back from 0-2.”
The third set played out that way as DePaul did everything it could to prevent Creighton from building any momentum. No team held a lead larger than two points until Creighton got kills from their two outside hitters in freshman Taryn Kloth and junior Jess Bird to help push the Bluejays out to a 20-16 lead. DePaul clawed back to cut the deficit to two, but a kill by Creighton sophomore middle blocker Marysa Wilkinson and an attack error by the Blue Demons gave Creighton the set and kept their comeback hopes alive.
Baumert had 13 assists in the third set as Creighton hit a staggering .412 as a team. Five different Bluejays had at least five attacks, and four of them had at least three kills in the third game. Booth said that the move to Baumert wasn’t an issue of trying to improve the setting, but instead a decision to find some kind of spark before it was too late to matter.
“Game two had nothing to do with the setting, it was the passing, and we had opportunities to win game two when we came back and tied it up. I look back on that game as a missed opportunity for sure,” Booth said. “When you are struggling you look for something that can change things, and Maggie is a captain for us. She brings good leadership, I think she brings a calm, so it wasn’t because of what kind of setting was going on, it was just about having a change. We just were not playing the way that we are capable of playing.”
The third set was more up to Creighton’s standards. As was the fourth. And the fifth.
The Bluejays rolled from point one on offense. Baumert had 13 more assists in the fourth game, and Creighton used a 10-1 run midway through the set to put it away and force a decisive fifth game. Wilkinson and fellow middle blocker in redshirt junior Lauren Smith combined for nine kills on 11 swings in the fourth set as Creighton’s attack started to show DePaul the parity it was know for coming in.
“All of us are great hitters on this team,” Wilkinson said. “That makes it really hard to block all of us, especially when we’re in system.”
The fifth and final set played out like the last round of a heavyweight title fight as both teams came out swinging for the fences. Creighton scored the first five points, then DePaul tied it up with a 5-0 run of their own. Both teams used timeouts during the stretch, then Creighton landed the decisive blow with a 5-1 run that featured kills by Kloth, Wilkinson, and freshman outside hitter Jaali Winters to push the lead out to 10-6. DePaul got within three at match point, but an attack error by Maxwell finished off the Blue Demons and completed the comeback for Creighton.
The Bluejays hit .414 as a team in the three games they won after intermission. Four players finished in double figures led by a career-high 16 kills from Taryn Kloth. Lauren Smith tied her season-high with 14 kills and Marysa Wilkinson finished with 13 as the two middle blockers combined for a .694 attack percentage on 36 swings. Smith’s .722 hitting percentage was the highest in Creighton history for a five-set match, the previous record was .560 by former All-American Kelli Browning.
Jaali Winters was the last player in double figures for the Creighton attack, finishing with 13 kills and a career-high 15 digs for her sixth double-double of the season, and fourth in Big East play.
Baumert finished with a match-high 40 assists despite playing fewer sets than DePaul’s Colleen Smith. Once the passing improved, Creighton’s senior quarterback was able to distribute the ball evenly to her power hitters. As a senior, her experience brings a different element to the floor, and was once again the key in rallying the Bluejays to another win.
“She’s a fifth-year player, and she’s a veteran,” Wilkinson said. “Ever since I’ve been here she’s been a leader, and she’s really good at calming everyone on the court, and that is what we needed. With any setter that’s on we are comfortable, but Maggie has a different presence.”
Though she starts most matches with her balky right knee heavily wrapped up, the senior setter says she’s always ready for her coach to give the signal.
“I just prepare every match as if I am going to play,” Baumert said. “I’m paying attention to the scout, so I know what the other team is doing, so that if Coach decides to use me that she trusts me, and the players trust me, and I’m ready to go.”
The next time Baumert and the Bluejays will need to be ready is on Sunday afternoon when they welcome Marquette (12-6, 4-2) to D.J. Sokol Arena. The Golden Eagles swept Georgetown on the road on Friday night. They’ll fly from Washington, D.C. to Omaha to take on Creighton at 1:00 p.m. (CST).