Creighton started their final non-conference weekend in impressive fashion on Friday night with a 25-21, 25-12, 25-10 sweep of High Point at Maturi Pavilion in Minneapolis. The 3-time reigning Big South regular season champions hung tight with the 14th-ranked Bluejays in the first set and used a 4-0 scoring run to pull within five points midway through the second set, but the Jays responded by winning 35 of the match’s final 47 rallies to breeze to a sweep and improve to 8-2 on the season ahead of the Saturday night’s Top 15 showdown with No. 9 Minnesota.
“We knew first contacts were going to be very important,” CU head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said. “[High Point] served really aggressively in the first game and really rattled us. Then I thought our passing shored up and we really disrupted them with our serving. Games two and three were really clean performances offensively and with our first contacts.”
The Bluejays were flying high on Friday night (Juszyk / WBR)
The Bluejays committed six attack errors in the first set, then combined for four total in the second and third. They outhit the Panthers .517 to .083 in game two, then .582 to .000 in game three to put a stamp on their most dominant performance of the season to date. Sophomore outside hitter Ava Martin, senior middle blocker Kiana Schmitt and sophomore Ann Marie Remmes combined for 35 kills and only one attack error between them on just 51 attempts. Martin had a match-high 14 kills and hit .542, Remmes finished with seven kills and hit .727, and Schmitt terminated 13 balls and finished with .812 attack percentage to become only the second player in program history to hit over .800 while recording at least 12 kills.
That trio alone scored 43.5 points between kills, aces, and blocks. High Point’s entire team combined for 24.
“We passed well enough that [junior setter Kendra Wait] could create holes for them so that she had multiple options,” Booth said. “I also thought she mixed it up well so a lot of times our hitters were in single block or at least a late closing scenario, and I thought Kiana, Ann Marie, and Ava [Martin] all did a nice job of hitting different areas of the court. They would try to adjust to Kiana going cross court and then she would nail them line. Same with Ann Marie. Ann Marie has really been working at diversifying her slide and I thought she did that tonight. And Ava has always been pretty good at that.
“It was a mix between good passing, good setting, and then the hitters making good decisions.”
Creighton was at a different level defensively on Friday night (Juszyk / WBR)
Defensively, Creighton held High Point’s top offensive threat to a career-lows in both kills and attack percentage for the match. 2022 Big South Player of the Year Dylan Maberry came into the match averaging 4.24 kills per set and hitting .200 on the season. Against the Bluejays, she finished with three kills and five errors for a -.118 hitting clip.
“They didn’t use her as much as we anticipated, but I think our serving disrupted them,” Booth said. “We kind of knew trends with their setter so when the ball didn’t get far enough into the court their setter would just set the right sides, which had some success. I don’t think there was any secret sauce other than I think we do have a big outside block and we knew that their primary offense was their outside hitters … they were the ones we needed to make sure didn’t go off. I felt like both our blocking and our defense behind it did a nice job controlling them.”
Set one was by far the most competitive of the match with seven ties and four lead changes. Creighton started to pull away midway through when they opened up a 16-12 to force former Bluejay assistant coach Ryan Meek, who now in his sixth season leading the Panthers, to burn his final timeout. High Point responded with a 4-0 scoring run to tie things up, which prompted the Jays to call a timeout of their own. The two sides traded the next four rallies before Schmitt and true freshman hitter Destiny Ndam-Simpson notched kills that allowed Creighton to take a 20-18 lead. CU won five of the eight rallies at end game as Martin found the floor for kills on her team’s last three points to seal the 25-21 win.
Creighton celebrated victory on Friday against High Point (Juszyk / WBR)
Creighton raced out to a 15-6 lead in set two before the Panthers used a 4-0 run to force Kirsten Bernthal Booth to burn a timeout. The Bluejays broke the huddle and won 10 of the next 12 rallies to close out a 25-12 win and claim a 2-0 match lead at intermission. Martin, Remmes, and Schmitt tallied 13 kills on 17 error-free swings in game two alone. The dominance didn’t subside in set three as Creighton went on a 10-point scoring run after the Panthers won the first rally to effectively put the match out of reach before any hope of a reverse sweep could gain momentum. After High Point forced the Jays to regroup midway through set two, CU outscored them 35-12 the rest of the match. They committed only three service errors and one attack error on those final 47 rallies.
“We just didn’t give many points away,” Booth said. “With a team that is maybe struggling a little bit, if you give them points with either serving errors or hitting errors then all of a sudden, they can get momentum. We’ve seen that in our favor [this season]. All of a sudden you get this sense that you can battle back. We just haven’t played that clean all season for that long of a period of time. It was good to see. We’re going to have some different matchups that will be different challenges tomorrow, but I hope that we can continue to play clean volleyball.”
The Bluejays will close out non-conference play on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. (CT) against 9th-ranked Minnesota. The Golden Gophers are 4-3 on the season with losses to No. 3 Florida, No. 5 Stanford, and No. 6 Texas. They hold wins over High Point and TCU as well as No. 18 Baylor and No. 7 Oregon. The last time Creighton and Minnesota squared off was in 2019 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Golden Gophers won that match in five sets on their home floor and advanced all the way to the Final Four before falling to eventual national champion Stanford in the national semifinals.
As they’ll likely still be without All-American, six-rotation stud Norah Sis, Creighton knows it will have to win the serve and pass battle and mitigate the unforced errors to combat Minnesota’s size and physicality.
“I think first contacts for both teams are going to be really important again,” Booth said. “High Point won that first game [against Minnesota] when they had a ton of aces and really took them out of system. They are a much more physical team than High Point — they are big everywhere, including a 6-foot-3 setter, so we are going to have some different matchup issues. Similar to a Purdue, an Iowa State, or a Nebraska. They just have different athletes, so we are going to have to be in system against teams like that. First contacts will be the number one key to the match and then limiting our unforced errors.”
The matchup between Jays and Golden Gophers will be streamed live on Big Ten Network Plus.
