The Creighton volleyball team dropped the first set against visiting Marquette, then lost their libero Kate Elman to an injury late in the second, but still managed to defeat the talented Golden Eagles in four sets (17-25, 25-20, 25-15, 25-21) to sweep the regular season series and take over sole possession of first place in the Big East conference on “Pink Out” night at D.J. Sokol Arena on Friday evening.
The combination of Bluejay attack errors and the Marquette block derailed Creighton in the opening set. With the first game tied 7-7, outside hitters Katie Neisler and Jess Bird committed consecutive attack errors to give the Golden Eagles a 9-7 lead, a lead that they would not relinquish the remainder of the set. The Marquette lead grew to 15-10 after another error by Bird and one by Kelli Browning forced Creighton to take a timeout to try halting the visitor’s momentum.
“I thought early on our passing was very suspect,” said Bluejay head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth. “We were telling [the team] after game one that Marquette won the pass and serve game. It goes back to Volleyball 101, you know, you have to win the pass and serve game to get in system.”
The Bluejays saved set point twice thanks to a kill by Bird and an ace by Ashley Jansen, but Marquette’s Autumn Bailey drove home her fifth kill to end any hopes of a Creighton rally and give the Golden Eagles a 1-0 lead in the match with a 25-17 victory in the opening set. Bailey, the preseason pick for Big East player of the year, led all players with five kills, five digs, and two blocks in the set.
With the second set now almost a must-win before intermission, Creighton kept things in perspective and cleaned up the attack issues that plagued them in the first, which allowed them to hang around through the midway point of the set. Leading 12-11, but with the block yet to be a factor, Booth inserted senior Michelle Sicner into the front row, but an immediate 3-0 run by Marquette forced a Bluejay timeout to regroup. Out of the timeout, Sicner started connecting with power hitters Jess Bird and Kelli Browning, and also teamed up with Browning to get a block to give the Jays a 16-15 lead.
“I didn’t come in thinking I was going to use Michelle, I came in thinking we’ve got depth and if we need sparks in different positions we have possibilities to do that,” Booth said.
“We’ve got several different players that I feel comfortable to do that in, and we opted to do it in that position.”
That depth would be tested in a way no one would hope it would be later in the set when Creighton’s all-time digs leader, libero Kate Elman, injured her arm diving for a ball near the press table. Elman stayed down for some time while the trainers tended to her before eventually walking back to the Creighton bench on her own. The injury occurred with the set tied at 18, but another kill by Bailey put the Bluejays down a point and led to Creighton’s final timeout before intermission.
Booth says she kept it simple during the timeout, “I thought we were fine, I just didn’t want us to panic.”
“We needed to rally and we kind of challenged our leadership at that point to rally the troops. Let’s go.”
Short. Sweet. Effective. The Bluejays scored seven of the next eight points and went to the locker room tied thanks to a 25-20 come-from-behind win in the second set.
With Elman now on the bench, her armed heavily wrapped and tears in her eyes, junior outside hitter Melanie Jereb took her place and the Bluejays took off, practically ending the third set as quickly as it started thanks to a 9-2 lead created by some crowd-jolting kills by Leah McNary. Creighton’s senior outside hitter struggled in the first two sets, but she turned it on in the second. She had five of her 11 kills on the evening by the midway point of the third set as Marquette burned both of their timeouts after falling by the time Creighton had built a 13-5 lead. With McNary swinging for the fences, and Jereb and Ashley Jansen flying around in the back row to pick up the slack for Elman the Jays rolled to a 25-15 victory and took a 2-1 lead in the match.
In the fourth set, Jereb’s eight digs combined with six kills on 11 swings from Wisconsin-native Kelli Browning helped go on run after run in the third set to put away the Golden Eagles and complete the regular season sweep. Marquette fought off four match points, but a cross court by Michelle Sicner ended the comeback and improved the Bluejays to 16-7 on the season, which includes a Big East-best 9-1 record in conference play.
Jereb, playing libero for the first time in her volleyball career, led the Bluejays with a season-high 16 digs as Elman’s replacement. Coach Booth spoke after the match of how proud she was of what ‘Mel’ not only did tonight, but also her impact on the team, “What Melanie did tonight is so awesome, because that kid is the most selfless kid if you guys know her. She just is all about team,” Booth said. “We weren’t thinking we were going to put her in the [libero] spot, but she did well late in that second game and our instinct was let’s go with her. She’s a winner and I’m just really happy that ‘Mel’ did that. Obviously we hope Kate is going to be o.k., but if not we’ve got depth.”
What might get lost in the shuffle behind what Sicner and Jereb did off the bench or how long Elman might be out was another dominant performance from their 2-time All-American middle blocker, Kelli Browning. She finished with 18 kills and just two attack errors in 27 swings to lead all players. Against Marquette in her career, she has 64 kills on 128 swings with only 11 attack errors.
“She’s very intense,” Jereb said of Browning’s approach to facing the Golden Eagles. “She’s friendly with those girls, but she wants to beat them bad.”
For Coach Booth, the performances, especially this year, by Browning has more to it than just where she is from or whether or not she across the net from Marquette.
“I think she’s one of the most mentally tough kids that I’ve ever coached,” Booth said. “I think she’s under-the-radar mentally tough, because she’s not flashy, well she is flashy, but she’s not like a rah-rah kid. She’s just intense. The thing with her is that is she makes an error she wants the next ball. I know she had really good numbers tonight, but she’s had insane numbers all year. I’m just letting her go.”
The win combined with Seton Hall’s loss to Xavier, the Bluejays now own a one-game lead in the Big East regular season standings with eight matches remaing, four at home and four on the road. “It feels pretty good,” Browning said after the match, “we knew coming into it that it was going to be a really big match. Marquette is always a fun team to play and they are one of our bigger rivals in conference.”
The Jays like the position they are in, but with road matches at Xavier and Butler along with a home finale against Seton Hall remaining, they aren’t clearing a spot to hang another championship banner just yet. “We have to take care of things on our end,” Booth said. “If [other teams] help us out that’s obviously a good thing, but the fact is there is so much volleyball in front of us that it’s match to match. DePaul counts the same as Marquette, so now it’s a matter of making sure we stay locked in to play well on Sunday. Then we’ll look forward to Georgetown and so on and so forth.”
The Bluejays (16-7 overall, 9-1 Big East) will host the DePaul Blue Demons (3-19 overall, 1-9 Big East) at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday at D.J. Sokol Arena. Creighton has won three of the four matches the Blue Demons all-time, including a 3-1 win in Chicago, Ill., back on Oct. 3rd.
Kate Elman’s status for Sunday is unknown. She is scheduled to have an x-ray done soon to determine the extent of her injury.