In yesterday’s win over Loyola Chicago, Creighton had to chase down the Ramblers in the first two sets and outplay them at end game to earn the sweep. On Saturday afternoon, however, the 18th-ranked Bluejays outmatched Purdue in pretty much every phase to sweep the 16th-ranked Boilermakers 28-26, 25-22, 25-20 in front of 2,415 loud and rowdy fans on “Taylor Swift Day” at Holloway Gymnasium in West Lafeyette. Creighton checked every major box. They out-killed Purdue 48-35, out-hit them .246 to .148, out-dug them 70-65, out-blocked them 9-7, and out-aced them 6-2 to earn an opening weekend road win that will likely have a ripple effect that lasts all the way up to Selection Sunday on November 26.
“It’s a great win,” Jays head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “We are going to have a grind over the next four weeks and every match is huge for building a resume to get in the NCAA Tournament, to get a seed, all these things are so critical.”
Kirsten Bernthal Booth was excited for Creighton’s win on Saturday against Purdue (Spomer / WBR)
Creighton held a 24-20 lead in set one, but the Boilermakers saved six set points to extend game once before a service error by Second Team All-Big Ten middle blocker Raven Colvin and a big swing by reigning Big Ten Freshman of the Year Eva Hudson gave CU the 28-26 win. Purdue opened up a 15-10 lead midway through set two in an attempt to even the match heading into intermission, but the Bluejays responded with three of their match-high six service aces to fuel a 15-6 run to go up 2-0 at the break. Creighton fell behind early out of the gates in game three, but they used a 10-4 run to pull ahead 15-13 at the media timeout. They never trailed the rest of the set and closed it out with a 5-0 run to polish off their second sweep in as many days.
It was Purdue’s first home loss to a team outside the Big Ten since August 27, 2016, and the first time the Boilermakers have been swept in their own gym by a non-conference opponent in nearly 16 years.
“This is such a great atmosphere,” Booth said. “They pack it in, and the students are loud. During our pass and serve this morning we had our coaches standing behind our servers just screaming at them. We were trying to get them ready; it was fun.”
Creighton’s scouting report execution was a big key in the marquee win. Purdue’s outside hitter duo of Hudson and freshman Chloe Chicoine — the No. 1 overall recruit in the nation for the class of 2023 — combined 33 kills and a .270 attack percentage in their four-set win over Duke on Friday night. Against the Bluejays, though, they were limited to 19 combined kills and a .107 attack percentage on 84 swings. The performances of CU’s defensive specialists were major factors in keeping Purdue’s powerful pins on ice throughout the match. Senior libero Ellie Bolton finished with a match-high 22 digs and freshman Sydney Breissinger chipped in 19. The most any Purdue player had was 16. Both Bolton and Breissinger each had a service ace on the afternoon as well, with the latter getting the best of Chicoine to set up match point at 24-20 in game three.
Ellie Bolton is wearing the libero jersey this season and making her mark on defense (Spomer / WBR)
“Ellie Bolton was special good today defensively and in serve receive,” Booth said. “Those are two of the best outsides in the country and she dug them really well. Ellie was one of the standouts of the match. And then Syd, as a freshman, hitting those serves late in the game [was huge].”
“I think we’re big on the right side, so it’s a good matchup that their two best players are outsides. It’s early in the year, but they have some tendencies. We got strong blocks up and then people played great defense behind it. Going in we knew they were going to get some good kills, but we couldn’t let any junk drop. I thought defensively we were scrappy.”
In theory, 12 service errors are just free points for the opponent and not something you necessarily want to combat on the road. Especially against a top 20 team that’s coming at you at all times with elite physicality and athleticism. However, in order to establish an aggressive serving game and get teams out of system offensively, you have to live with breaking a few eggs. Also, if you’re going to miss, miss long. Creighton did that all day long on and they were rewarded with six aces and a more predictable Purdue attack coming back at them. Getting the Boilermakers off the net just enough to be able to read and react to their primary tendencies was part of the scouting report going in, and it was perhaps the biggest box that Creighton checked on Saturday.
“I noticed a lot in the first set because I felt like we had so many opportunities to open that up and we were missing [serves] sometimes back-to-back.” Booth said. “But, I get it. We want them to serve aggressively, and I know there are some nerves, so there is a balance as a coach of saying, ‘hey, take a deep breath, but keep going for it.’ I know it can be frustrating, and sometimes my instincts just say to free ball it in, but that’s not a good decision. We felt that if we could get Purdue two feet off the net, we knew where they were going. Some of our scout [execution] was really, really huge. We just needed to get them slightly out of system and then we pretty much knew where the ball was going at that point. That helped us quite a bit.”
Offensively, the Jays were led by the reigning Big East Freshman of the Year and the reigning Big East Player of the Year. For the second straight day, Ava Martin led the way, finishing with a match-high 15 kills to go along with six digs and a block. Norah Sis added 12 kills (trailing only Martin for the most by any player on the day), six digs, two aces, and a block.
“That’s the good thing about having two great outsides is we trust both of them,” Booth said. “And they are really different. I thought Ava had a fantastic match against a really big block … we adjusted some of our tempo a little bit to try to be able to use their hands a little bit more because when we were going fast and low, they were clamping on that.”
On the opposite pin, senior middle blocker Kiana Schmitt and sophomore Ann Marie Remmes put the ball down seemingly at will on the slide, which is when the hitter peals back around the setter and swings from the pin instead of the middle of the net. Schmitt and Remmes combined for 15 kills and put up a .462 attack percentage on 26 combined swings.
“We hit really, really well on the slide,” Booth said. “I think we were around [a .400 attack percentage] in the middle of the third game. We were swinging high which was great to see. [Purdue] really tried to disrupt us — you could tell they wanted to stop it because they were serving short to hope that we couldn’t run it. That did disrupt us at different times, but luckily Kiana is pretty good at taking the ball over her shoulder some, and Ann Marie at the end of game one I saw her telling Kendra to ‘give her the ball.’ That’s pretty gutsy. It was actually kind of surprising for me to see, but I loved that she was like ‘give me the ball!’ and then she got a kill [laughs]. I loved it.”
Kendra Wait had a great day in her setter position (Spomer / WBR)
Speaking of Creighton’s distributor, junior setter Kendra Wait had herself a phenomenal afternoon in several different departments to help lead her team to victory. Wait finished with 34 assists and 10 digs for the 36th double-double of her college career. She also added five kills without committing an attack error to go along with five blocks and two aces.
“I think Kendra was frustrated with the way she played yesterday,” Booth said. “She was really good in all aspects. She blocked well, she defended well, and she set a great game. And maybe even bigger, she made great decisions. I was really impressed with her decision-making. She played like an All-American today.”
With two big wins in the bag Creighton will set its sights on a winless Duke team that is smarting from a four-set loss to Purdue on Friday night and a sweep at the hands of Loyola Chicago on Saturday night. The Bluejays (2-0) will look to avoid the hangover performance when they take on the Blue Devils (0-2) at 11:00 a.m. (CT) on Sunday morning. Like the first day of the opening weekend tournament, the match will be streamed live on Big Ten Network Plus.