A gymnasium full of chattering children, an 11am start time, and a top 15 showdown in Milwaukee in 31 hours weren’t enough to distract the 13th-ranked Creighton volleyball team from the task at hand on Friday morning.
The Bluejays needed just 69 minutes to finish off DePaul in straight sets (25-18, 25-21, 25-15) in front of crowd of 1,544 for “Field Trip Day” at McGrath-Phillips Arena in Chicago, Illinois.
Junior outside hitter Erica Kostelac led the way with a match-high 14 kills. Sophomore Jaela Zimmerman added eight on 16 swings; redshirt freshman Keeley Davis finished with seven, and middle blockers Megan Ballenger and Naomi Hickman each chipped in with five to round out a balanced attack.
Kostelac also tied her career-high with four aces, while Creighton as a team finished with 11 to keep the Blue Demons from getting in sync offensively, something Bluejay coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth felt was a key to the three-set victory.
“We were able to disrupt them from behind the line,” Booth said. “That was really critical because they are a really good offensive team. When they are in system they have a lot of success.”
Creighton rode the right arm of Erica Kostelac to a reasonably comfortable win in game one. The transfer from Cincinnati had six kills on seven swings to go along with a pair of aces as the Bluejays (12-3, 5-0 Big East) out-hit DePaul .308 to .048 in the first set.
“I thought we passed well, which created holes, and if Erica has a hole a lot of good things happen,” Booth said. “She also took some really good swings that we really liked against a huge double block. She was swinging higher, and we’ve been working on that, so it was great to see. She did a lot of damage behind the line too.”
The Blue Demons (9-8, 1-4 Big East) were much sharper in set two, out-hitting Creighton .343 to .333, but offensive parity carried CU to a 25-21 win. Kostelac added four kills to her total, while Zimmerman and Davis each added three to help their team earn the 2-0 match lead at the break.
Game three was a wipe-out as Creighton recorded kills on 15 of their 21 swings without committing a single error after intermission en route to a 25-15 clincher. The .714 team hitting percentage for set three was tied for the third-best single-set mark in program history.
Overall, Booth was mostly pleased with her team’s ability to stay present and focus on the moment without looking ahead to the highly-anticipated match up against 10th-ranked Marquette on Saturday night.
“That’s leadership from our seniors,” she said. “We had a discussion last night that if we get to pick one match to win this weekend it’s got to be DePaul. When I said it was the most important match of the weekend, it really was. Saturday night is icing. I don’t mean that to take away the importance of that match now, but that match doesn’t destroy our resume. Today would have. It goes back to making sure the players understand that we have to come out ready to go, because if we don’t it doesn’t matter what we do [against Marquette]. I think we’ve got seniors that buy into that, understand that, and that permeates down to the other players.
“They came out energized during serve and pass, and they were energized during our warm-up. I would have been surprised if we weren’t ready to go just by the energy that they had on the bus and things along those lines.”
Now the Bluejays are safe to turn the page to Saturday night for round one of what figures to be a Big East title preview. Opening serve between No. 13 Creighton and No. 10 Marquette (14-2, 4-0 Big East) is set for 6:00 p.m. from the Al McGuire Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The match is scheduled to air on Big East Digital Network.
