Way back in September, Elise Goetzinger openly admitted that Creighton let the aura of the name on the front of the jersey affect their mindset in a negative way in their only two losses of the season at Nebraska and Louisville. The Jays went into those matches with an underdog’s mindset in the hopes that it would open them up to play free, but it turned out to do the opposite.
Heading into Friday afternoon’s Sweet 16 showdown against reigning, back-to-back national champion Texas, they flipped that script.
“In the non-conference, we were reflecting on how when we went into Louisville and Nebraska, we kind of were taking the approach that we are the underdog, the pressure is off, we can just go after it,” Creighton senior outside hitter Norah Sis said. “I feel like we didn’t really respond very well when we viewed it that way, so then for those Purdue and [Kansas] matches, we took the approach of we are the better team, we need to go earn it. We expected to win, rather than just hoped to play really well.
“We kind of talked about that before this game. We were the higher seed, but nobody wanted or thought that we would win, so we kind of switched it and were talking like we were the better team, we have to believe that and go get it and not play to be the underdog but play because we know we are better team.”
Despite entering the day as the higher seeded team, the Bluejays were the betting underdog against the team that has sat on the sport’s throne the past two seasons. Creighton shrugged all of that off and turned the name on the front of the burnt orange jerseys across the net from them into something to hunt instead of something to fear. When the dust settled just over two hours later, it was CU celebrating a 24-26, 25-19, 25-21, 25-20 four-set victory to move on to the Elite Eight for just the second time in the history of the program.
“We clearly had the utmost respect for Texas in our prep, but we also tried to point out some areas that we felt like they had some deficiencies,” Creighton head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “I think we told them several times they were the better team, that they needed to go get it because they were the better team. I’ve made that mistake as a coach of kind of what Norah alluded of ‘hey, this is a really good team over there’ … we did try to take a different approach for them to know that we thought that they, at their best, were capable of winning this match.”
Creighton might not have always been at their best on Friday. Some dips are expected throughout a match that features 185 rallies, but they were more than sharp enough in several critical phases to overcome letting go of the rope in the first set and bouncing back to decisively control the final three sets against one of the best programs in the sport.
The Bluejays out-hit the Longhorns .307 to .197. They out-killed them 60-55, out-blocked them 11-2, and out-aced them 8-3.
Norah Sis did her magic on Friday (Spomer / WBR)
Sis won the much-anticipated battle of six-rotation senior superstars against 3-time national champion and 2023 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Madi Skinner. The Papillion, Nebraska native hit .227 and finished with 15 kills, 13 digs, four aces, three blocks and was a perfect 21-for-21 in serve receive. Skinner had 23 kills, but 18 more swings than Sis to get them. She ended her highly decorated career hitting just .194 against Creighton to go along with four digs and an ace.
That was far from CU’s only impressive individual performance, too. Junior outside hitter Ava Martin had a match-high eight kills in the first set alone. She matched Sis’ team-high with 15, while also adding in three digs, a pair of blocks, and an ace. Senior middle blockers Kiara Reinhardt and Elise Goetzinger tallied 16 kills and 11 blocks between them while combining for a .387 attack percentage. Redshirt freshman opposite hitter Jaya Johnson had nine kills on .667 hitting and came up with four blocks while lined up across the net from Skinner all match-long.
The star of stars, as she usually is, was senior setter Kendra Wait. The Gardner, Kansas product produced match-highs in assists with 47 and digs with 17 while adding in five kills on a .500 attack percentage. She turned Texas’ defense into a cat chasing a laser pointer as she distributed the ball to her plethora of lethal hitters throughout the afternoon. Longhorns 24-year head coach Jerritt Elliott sang the praises of No. 15 in white and blue after the match.
“She’s a special player,” he said. “She sets a little bit differently. It’s a little bit of a deep dish, and I think that makes your middles bite a lot. I think she does a good job moving around, seeing the block, and puts up a lot of good balls, and she keeps you off balance the entire time. She does a good job from the service line, she battles and plays great defense, and she keeps you on your toes. When you have a setter like that, it’s special.”
Although the Bluejays seemingly had the four-time champs on a string for most of the match, they weren’t without a few bouts of adversity. The biggest one came at the end of the first set when a few lapses in execution and some aggressive misses allowed Texas to save two set points and finish game one on 4-0 scoring run to steal a 26-24 win and a 1-0 match lead.
“We really leaned into the fact that we were right there,” Wait said of conversation in the huddle after absorbing the first-set gut punch. “We thought there were some points that we left out on the court. We thought there was a few that we could have been a little bit cleaner on, and we leaned into that, saying, ‘hey, we can grow from this.’ If we go out there and if we just keep punching and keep doing us, then we think good things will happen. That paid off.”
It did indeed. Creighton built a 10-4 lead in the second set and never trailed at any point, nor did they allow Texas the satisfaction of drawing even despite several attempts to repeat the feat of set one. Sis had five kills and seven digs in game two alone to help the Bluejays out-hit the Longhorns .361 to .171 in evening up the match at intermission with a 25-19 win.
The third set was much tighter, but Sis showed her moxie once again. With the two squads locked in a 17-17 tie, the senior All-American produced three kills on the next four rallies to ignite a 5-0 run. The Longhorns couldn’t get any closer than three points the rest of the way as Creighton grabbed the 2-0 match lead with a 25-21 third-set victory.
In set four, Kirsten Bernthal Booth put on display early on just how much she trusts her veteran-laden group to sort things out. Texas, for the first time all match, was the team getting off to the fast start as they won eight of the first 12 rallies. Booth didn’t blink and her team rewarded her faith by winning six of the next eight rallies to tie things up at 10-10. That forced Jerritt Elliott to burn the first timeout of the set.
His second and final followed shortly after that when a Kiara Reinhardt kill gave the Bluejays a 15-12 lead and sparked what you could sense from both fanbases in attendance at Rec Hall as the beginning of the end of Texas’ two-year title reign.
Creighton started the day’s festivities with a Kiara Reinhardt block of Marianna Singletary and ended them with a Jaya Johnson block of Madi Skinner.
“Blocking is my favorite part of the game, so I think doing something like that against such a high-profile player that really does boost your confidence,” Johnson said. “It takes a lot of work, and we’ve been working on it all week. It’s not even just me, it’s everyone. We’ve really locked into that this week. Like, a lot. I think that really paid off.”
The last time Creighton reached the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament was back in 2016. Then Texas halted their Final Four dreams with a dominant sweep at Gregory Gymnasium in Austin. Now that the Jays have slayed the Longhorns, they’ll get their long-awaited second crack at breaking through to the final weekend. In order to pull it off they will need to rise where the previous Creighton team fell — against a legendary program on their home court. That’s because Penn State held serve with a four-set win of their own against CU’s Big East rival Marquette in the nightcap of action at Rec Hall on Friday.
The Nittany Lions improved to a perfect 19-0 at home this season with the win and they have now won 41 consecutive matches in the NCAA Tournament. A streak that covers nearly 20 years.
First serve between No. 6 Creighton and No. 3 Penn State is set for Sunday night on ESPN at 7:30 CT / 8:30 ET.