Jaali Winters and crew got a warm-up with the win over DePaul and are ready for Sunday (Spomer / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY$
With a rare top 25 Big East showdown against Marquette waiting for them on Sunday, the 10th-ranked Creighton volleyball team made quick work of an over-matched DePaul team in front of 2,041 fans at D.J. Sokol Arena on Friday night. The Bluejays notched their 30th straight home win over a Big East team with a 25-13, 25-12, 25-15 victory over the Blue Demons to improve to 9-4 overall and 1-0 in league play.
Senior outside hitter Taryn Kloth finished with a .409 attack percentage and led the way with a match-high 11 kills. Her fellow All-American pin-mate, Jaali Winters, added eight kills on 20 swings without committing an attack error all night. It was the fifth time in their illustrious careers that they both finished a match with an attack percentage of .400 or better as they paced an offense that produced a season-best .437 hitting clip.
“We’re thrilled to start the Big East season with a win,” Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “We are building to try and accomplish some goals and every match counts equally. This is just as important as Sunday and we’re pleased to get the W.”
Creighton came out with the pedal pinned to the floor as redshirt junior Megan Ballenger recorded a first-ball kill, then handed things off to senior defensive specialist Samantha Bohnet for a 4-0 serving run that included two aces sandwiched around a pair of kills by Winters that looked so effortless it made the eventual outcome feel like a foregone conclusion after just five points.
“I thought it was awesome,” Bohnet said of the team’s fast start. “The energy was great, we were serving aggressively and we didn’t let up, and our hitters were swinging high. We’ve played against some really tall blockers in our non-con, so I thought we went out and keyed on all of the things that we need to do to beat the more physical teams that we may play later on. I thought we did what we needed to do — we served aggressively and we passed well. Everything was really good. We were focused for this match.”
Samantha Bohnet is a bit of a secret weapon behind the serving line for the Bluejays (Spomer / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY$
DePaul had no answers offensively or defensively, and Creighton easily dealt with their strategy of serving short to stay in system and build a rhythm early. Winters and Kloth each had five kills and no errors, and the Bluejays rattled off a .517 attack percentage and sided-out at 85% in a 25-13 game one win.
Game two was even more lopsided as six different players recorded kills to help the Jays roll out to an 18-4 lead. By the time they secured the 25-12 victory, nine different players had at least one kill in the second set alone as Creighton out-hit DePaul .440 to -.033 to take a 2-0 lead in the match.
Set three was the most (and only) competitive set of the match. There were eight ties and five lead changes, but all of them occurred in the early portion of the set as the Bluejays used an 11-2 run and closed the show on a pair of kills by Kloth to earn the 25-15 win and the first sweep on their brand new sport court.
The taraflex material was the result of a donation spearheaded by boosters Dorothy Nipp and Jane Alseth, and it drew rave reviews from the players after the match.
Jaali Winters said that her sweat dried faster on it, which, if you’ve followed her career up to this point, means fewer trips to the up official for a towel to wipe the floor. Bohnet, however, was more focused on how it felt when she landed on it.
“Defense is more fun now,” she said. “It feels so much better. I’m always willing to dive because it’s my job, but it hurts a lot less.”
Bohnet, Winters, and the rest of the Bluejays will be back on the new court on Saturday as they prepare to face conference rival Marquette at home on Sunday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. Led by reigning Big East Player of the Year, Allie Barber, and 6-foot-6 fifth-year senior middle blocker Jenna Rosenthal, the 21st-ranked Golden Eagles are 13th in the country in kills per set at 14.29 and 49th in attack percentage.
“They are a good team,” Bohnet said. “They are really physical and they are hungry. They want to beat us. Those games have been so fun the last two years … they are definitely hungry to beat us. People don’t want to see us win, which is exciting for us to go into that game pumped up on a Sunday afternoon. We have to focus on our side of the net and know that we’ll have to press harder, swing higher, and get under the ball a lot better on defense. Once we key into those areas it’ll be a good match. We’re excited.”
Marquette was tabbed by league coaches in the preseason as the favorite to win the league despite Creighton’s run of four consecutive regular season and conference tournament titles entering the 2018 campaign. Despite the fact that the Bluejays used six players on Friday night who have never faced their Big East rivals, the upperclassmen are confident they will be up to speed in time for first serve on Sunday afternoon.
“I don’t know if they understand (the rivalry), but we’ve played a lot of really tough teams already this season, so they know what it’s like to go into battle,” Jaali Winters said. “We set up a really hard non-conference and they know what it’s like to play good teams — that’s important.
“Do they really understand the rivalry with Marquette at this point? I hope so. But we’ll be educating them on it over the next two days.”