Sophomore outside hitter Jaela Zimmerman led the way with a career-high 16 kills as 15th-ranked Creighton held of a scrappy Wyoming club to close out non-conference play with a 25-11, 25-23, 25-19 sweep in front of nearly 2,200 fans at D.J. Sokol Arena on Saturday afternoon.
With the win, the Bluejays captured the 2019 Creighton Classic crown and improved to 7-3 on the season with Big East regular season play right around the corner.
Set one turned into a glorified scrimmage after the first 12 points were tabulated. Zimmerman had two out-of-system kills and a combo block with senior middle blocker Megan Ballenger to push Creighton out to a 5-0 lead. Wyoming scored the next two points after an early timeout, but CU responded with another 5-0 run to extend the lead to 10-2.
It only got worse from there as the Cowgirls sided-out at just 29.0 percent in game one as the Bluejays cruised to a 25-11 victory. Zimmerman finished the opening set with five kills on eight swings, while Ballenger added five blocks (two solos and three assists) to help hold Wyoming to an ice cold -.027 hitting percentage.
Zimmerman continued to tear it up with seven kills on 11 swings in game two, but Wyoming’s block disrupted the rest of Creighton’s hitters. The Cowgirls finished the second set with five ace blocks and held CU to .178 hitting on 45 attempts. After a late 6-1 run by the visitors, junior outside hitter Erica Kostelac and junior right-side hitter Naomi Hickman teamed up for a block on set point to give the Jays a 25-23 win and a two sets to none lead at intermission.
The third set started off in similar fashion as the first, with Creighton jumping out to a 10-3 lead and forcing Wyoming to burn another early timeout.
However, unlike in game one, the Cowgirls (5-6) rallied late to make things interesting. They trimmed Creighton’s lead all the way down to one at 19-18 in the hopes of extending the match and forcing at least a fourth set, but Zimmerman and redshirt freshman outside hitter Keeley Davis would have none of that as they alternated kills on each of CU’s final four points to seal the deal with a 25-19 win.
“We talked about how Wyoming was a slow-starting team, and I think you saw that today,” Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “They had a slow start and you think you’re rolling because you win the first game so easily, and then they kind of kick it into gear.
“I thought we did a lot of good things, but our offense wasn’t as clean. Part of that was because Wyoming started taking some risks with the block and that disrupted some of our hitters.
“Wyoming will be a top-100, maybe top-75 team, RPI-wise. They have the makings of having a good season, so I think this was a good win for us heading into Big East play.”
Jaela Zimmerman earned the Creighton Classic MVP nod with her career-best 16 kills on Saturday. In the wins over Wichita State and Wyoming, the sophomore out of Lincoln, Nebraska averaged 4.50 kills per set and committed just four attack errors to finish with a .404 hitting percentage.
Her swings came from all over the court over the weekend — back row, right side, left side, in system, out of system, you name it.
“I was able to do that because we passed really well today,” she said. “[Senior setter Madelyn Cole] likes to mix it up and coach Booth talked about moving them around at the net today, so Cole and I were focused on that.”
Davis joined Zimmerman as the only other Creighton player in double figures, finishing with 10 kills and only one error on 33 swings. They each had four digs and three blocks, and combined to produce four of CU’s six aces on the afternoon.
Two days after matching her career-high with eight blocks against Wichita State, Megan Ballenger bested it with nine rejections against Wyoming on Saturday to finish with 17 blocks over a period of six sets during the two-match, three-day tournament. The fifth-year senior helped lead Creighton to their two best blocking performances of the season to date as they finished with 11.0 against the Shockers and 14.0 against the Cowgirls.
The Bluejays also appeared to show some improvement from the service line, an area of weakness they’ve identified throughout non-conference play. After committing 10 or more service errors in six of their first nine matches, Creighton ended up with a season-low of five while managing to still produce six aces in the win over Wyoming.
“I think our focus today was getting the ball on the court and making them get out of it versus going behind the line and trying to get an ace every single time,” senior libero Brittany Witt said. “We knew we had to get them out of system, but we kind of took a little of the aggressiveness off so that we could make sure we weren’t making the error with our serves.”
Despite losing Jaali Winters, Taryn Kloth, Samantha Bohnet, Alexa Roumeliotis, and Kari Zumach from a team that won 29 matches in 2018, the Bluejays managed to go 7-3 against a non-conference slate that featured matches against three teams in Nebraska, Baylor, and Washington that are currently ranked in the top 10 of the AVCA Coaches Poll, and two more foes in No. 16 Kentucky and No. 20 Southern California that are in the top 20.
The .700 winning percentage is their best mark in non-conference play since the 2013 team rolled into Big East action at 9-3.
“There were a lot of unknowns coming into the season, so we were all very curious to see how it would turn out,” Witt said. “We’ve talked about how we are really good and we’ve loved what we’ve seen so far, but we can still get better, which is exciting because we’re not peaking now.
“There are a lot of improvements that we can make and things we can fix, so we’re excited to hopefully improve on those over the next couple months and hopefully be peaking at the end of the season.”
Creighton’s pursuit of a sixth consecutive Big East regular season and conference tournament title kicks off on Friday, September 27 when they host Villanova (8-2) at 7:00 p.m. at D.J. Sokol Arena.