While an occasional speed bump has slowed down the Creighton volleyball team in conference play, nothing has been able to stop them through the first seven matches against Big East competition. After winning the final three games in a five-set victory over DePaul on Friday night, Kirsten Bernthal Booth’s Bluejays knocked off conference rival Marquette in straight sets on Sunday afternoon at D.J. Sokol Arena.
The Golden Eagles (12-7, 4-3) hung tight in the first two games, dropping a 25-19 decision in the first, and a 25-21 result in the second before intermission, but the third set was all Creighton. Freshman phenom Jaali Winters had 11 kills on 12 swings in the final game as the Bluejays (13-7, 7-0) rolled out to an 18-7 lead before finishing off Marquette, 25-16, to earn the sweep.
“I thought we played great today,” Booth said. “I told the team it was good in all areas of our game. We served well, took them out of system. I thought that was a key thing. Even though our blocking numbers don’t look off the charts, we set good blocks, and contained things. Our defense to transition was the best that we’ve done in quite a while. I thought we hit well, obviously hitting .356 against a very good team is fantastic. But I just really liked our dig transition today. It’s something that I think has been inconsistent, and I thought we made Marquette earn any point that they got. We’ve talked about sometimes being inconsistent and giving points away, and I thought we gave away very few points today, so that was great to see.”
Winters finished with a match-high 23 kills and posted a career-best .541 attack percentage. In seven matches against Big East competition, she has four matches with more than 20 kills. Against Marquette, a lot of her damage was done from the back row. Aside from digging balls out defensively, she also was dangerous offensively from the back row when there was a block set up right in front of her.
“My mindset is I’m always ready to attack in the back row, whether I get the ball or not,” Winters said. “I’m always transitioning back and ready to hit, so whether it’s to me or not I’m always going to be ready for it.”
Senior setter Maggie Baumert started the match and finished with 48 assists and eight digs. She orchestrated a Creighton attack that hit .356 in the three sets against the Golden Eagles. Five different hitters had at least 13 sets, with Winters leading the way with 37. Baumert said that the freshman outside hitter has a way of letting her know where she is, even if she’s in the back row.
“I don’t know if you guys know, but Jaali screams for the ball, like really high-pitched,” Baumert said. “When I don’t hear anyone else, I always hear Jaali, so I always feel like I’m setting her out of system, but everyone did a great job. Obviously Jaali got on fire, so we’re going to use her more when she’s getting 23 kills in a match.”
After dropping the first two games against DePaul on Friday before eventually rallying to win the match, the Bluejays weren’t going to come out flat for a second match in a row. On Sunday against the Golden Eagles, they were the first team to 10, the first to 15, and the first to 20 in all three sets. Kirsten Bernthal Booth issued a pre-match challenge to her team about how they needed to come out to begin the match, and her team responded not only in the first set, but in the second and third as well.
“We came out ready to go,” Booth said. “We talked about that in the locker room. We have not been starting well, and I challenged each player to kind of take a different approach, personally, to make sure that we were ready to go. I think that was huge, because I think Marquette is a team that if they get momentum they are going to be tough. The fact that we came out and kind of immediately took control of the match I think set a tone that was in our favor. I tell you what, that’s a really good team that we beat out there today, and it will be a dog fight when we play them again. I think our team knew how important it was to come out right away and be ready to go.”
Now the challenge will be whether they can the carry that mentality over into the next weekend and the weekend after that, and so on. They are off to a 7-0 start in conference play for the second time in school history, and in the driver’s seat to repeat as Big East regular-season champions. But with six of their next eight matches on the road, in which all six will be of the Friday-Saturday back-to-back variety, Creighton’s 13th-year head coach knows that her team will need more of those strong starts and consistent performances as the season wears on.
“I think the key today was consistency,” Booth said. “That’s something that we’re working toward, and continuing to work on, and it will be a focus this week. If we can build off of this today I think our long-term opportunities are going to be great. But we have to do what we did today on Friday night and on Saturday night if we want to be great.”
Creighton’s next match will come on Friday when they take their unblemished conference record on the road to face Butler (5-14, 2-5) at 5:00 p.m. (CST). They’ll follow that up 25 hours later with a match at Xavier (9-8, 5-2). As it currently stands, the Musketeers are only two games behind the Bluejays in the Big East standings, so Saturday night’s match will be a big one for both teams as the first half of conference play wraps up.