Keeley Davis continues to pace the Blulejays (Juszyk / WBR)
Sometimes it was Xavier’s blocking, sometimes it was just a lack of focus on Creighton side, but in the end nothing went sideways for too long to prevent the 11th-ranked Bluejays from racking up another Big East sweep on Sunday afternoon as CU earned a 25-17, 25-23, 25-15 win to improve to 15-3 on the year and 8-0 in conference play.
Creighton’s performance overall was a bit of roller coaster ride, but it had a smooth landing as they hit .333 in set one, .100 in set two, and .464 in set three to secure their 31st consecutive win over a Big East opponent in front of a crowd of 1,918 on “Pink Out” Day at D.J. Sokol Arena.
“Anytime you can sweep a team you feel good about it, but I thought we were a little up and down today,” head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “I thought some things we did well, but [assistant coach Craig Dyer] talked after the game about how our sideout percentage wasn’t high, which the positive was we went on some really long serving runs … but we have to be siding out at a higher percentage. I just thought we were a little up and down.”
Redshirt freshman outside hitter Keeley Davis finished the afternoon with a match-high 14 kills on a .407 hitting clip. Sophomore six rotation Jaela Zimmerman ended up with 10 kills to join her as the only other player with double figure kills. Senior setter Madelyn Cole recorded her eighth double-double of the season with 10 digs to accompany her match-high 31 assists. Creighton also got strong performances from its other two senior starters as libero Brittany Witt led all players with 11 digs and flirted with a double-double herself in finishing with seven assists, while middle blocker Megan Ballenger rounded out the front row attack with eight kills on .538 hitting.
The Bluejays only finished with 2.5 blocks as a team, but aggressive serving led to nine aces and kept Xavier out of system most of the match to allow them to hold the Musketeers to an .060 attack percentage on 84 swings.
Xavier outside hitter Lauren Hanlon got her team off to a good start with a kill and two blocks to help them take a 5-4 lead. Unfortunately for the Musketeers, that was as close as it would get in set one as Keeley Davis sparked a 12-2 run with five kills and a solo block on Hanlon to put the Bluejays in front, 16-7. The redshirt freshman out of Colorado hit .545 in game one, finishing with seven kills on 11 swings, including the clincher to give Creighton the 25-17 win.
Setter Madelyn Cole found the hot hand and went with it. (Juszyk / WBR)
Cole felt that the team as a whole got off to a slow start, but once she sensed that Davis had found some rhythm she fed her over and over to keep the momentum rolling.
“Keeley and I talked about what is good for her,” Creighton’s senior setter said. “Communication with your hitters is always good that way if something isn’t working you can kind of figure it out. She talked to me about how she wants her sets to attack their block, so I think that really worked for her.”
After hitting .333 as a team in the first set, Creighton’s offense wasn’t as crisp in the second. The Bluejays hit just .100 collectively, committing nine attack errors in the process — their most in a set played to 25 since a home loss to Washington back on September 14. Although they never trailed once they cracked the 10-point mark, they found it difficult to put away the Musketeers. Eventually Cole won a joust ball at 24-23 to give her team the 2-0 match lead despite their inconsistencies in game two.
“I thought it was a variety of different things,” Booth said when asked what contributed to the up and down performance, as she put it. “It might be a hitting error, it might be that we didn’t get ourselves in system. I didn’t notice a lot of defensive miscues today, but I think what we’ll see is it was a variety of different things. I thought Xavier did a great job blocking. I thought we needed to attack edges, and that needs to be on us coaches a little bit because against Butler we kept saying, ‘great blocking team, great blocking team.’ We said that Xavier was a physical team, but I don’t think we locked into the fact that ‘physical team’ means they can get up. They did a nice job of putting up a big wall if we were out of system. We needed to do a better job of preparing the team, but they need to do a better job of executing because they’ve played against a lot of big blocks.
“I did think we covered pretty well, especially after we realized they were getting some good touches on the ball. But I wish we had made that adjustment a little bit earlier.”
Despite the close call in game two, Megan Ballenger thought the intermission served as a good reset to focus on finishing strong in game three instead of dwelling on what could have gone better in the second set.
“We just talked about being clean,” senior middle blocker said. “I think we did that well on Friday in our third set. Sometimes in a third set you can have a let up where a team comes back, so I think just playing clean for a full 25 points was just the goal, and hopefully getting better in that stretch too.”
Jaela Zimmerman hit the ground running with that mindset out of the locker room, pounding out four quick kills as Creighton jumped out to a 10-1 lead before Xavier knew what hit them. The Lincoln, Nebraska native had six of her 10 kills in the third set and didn’t commit an error on any of her eight swings.
“I thought she just hit some pretty tough shots,” Booth said of the sophomore’s game three outburst. “The thing with Jaela is that she can hit any spot on the court. I think a lot of hitters don’t have the touch that she has. You see that she can roll shot to the doughnut effectively, she can obviously slice and dice hard angle, she has a good line shot, she can hit deep corner. Not every player has the comfort to where if you say something is open that they can hit it. That makes her pretty tough to defend. I think she saw an area that they weren’t defending and just hit it two or three times in a row.”
While Zimmerman did most of the heavy lifting in game three by leading the team in kills, swings, and serve receptions, it was freshman middle blocker Kiana Schmitt who had the honor of putting the star on the tree. Just as she did in Friday’s win over Xavier, the rookie from Waunakee, Wisconsin put the match-clinching kill in the middle of the floor to seal the sweep.
Because of the veterans at her position, Schmitt spends most matches standing at the end of the bench encouraging her teammates. When she does find her way on the court it gives those same veterans a chance for a little role reversal.
“She’s our closer,” Cole joked after watching Schmitt finish off both sweeps this weekend. “She’s our big hype man, so we’re trying to give her the time. When she gets in we are all her number one fans.”
The Bluejays will head back on the road to close out the month of October with a pair of matches in Rhode Island against last-place Providence. The Friars (5-16, 0-8 Big East) will host Creighton at Alumni Hall at 5:00 p.m. on both Friday, October 25, and Saturday, October 26.
