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Volleyball Drops Two Matches in Texas, Falls to #20 in Polls Ahead of Big Week

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Weekly snapshot:

  • Beat Northern Iowa 3-1
  • Lost to #5 Louisville 3-1
  • Lost to Rice 3-1
  • Record 5-4

Nine games into the season, Creighton is clearly still figuring things out and finding the task of replacing three senior All-Americans to be a tough task. They dropped two of three matches over the weekend in the Rice Invitational to fall to 5-4 on the season entering a week where they will play at #1 Nebraska, undefeated Kansas State, and defending national champion Texas A&M.

“Obviously there’s no time to dwell on the things that could have, should have, would have been this weekend,” head coach Brian Rosen said Tuesday. “Our eyes are forward. Three really big matches this week, it definitely doesn’t get any easier. We’re excited for the week, excited to compete against and with the best in the country.”

It’s been a grueling non-conference slate, as always, and though the results haven’t been there yet, Rosen said he feels like the opponents have elevated CU’s game.

“We’re still fighting for consistency and kind of who we are and what we can be,” Rosen added. “We’ve shown lots of flashes of greatness, but not enough to finish off some of these sets. That’s probably the biggest disappointment from this weekend, just our ability to finish because we really played some of our best volleyball the season. I wish we could look back on it with more joy than we we are right now.”

The Jays dominated Friday’s match with UNI, winning in four sets (25-16, 25-17, 15-25, 25-19). They jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first set and were never seriously challenged, logging 13 net touches leading to a 5-1 edge in ace blocks.

They opened up a 4-1 lead in set two, and won by a near identical score on the same script — by completely dominating the match at the net. Eloise Brandewie got to seemingly every swing the Panthers took, and through two sets had six kills on .500 hitting.

“I thought the first two sets were really, really clean,” Rosen said afterward. “Our service pressure was so good early. Nora (Wurtz) got us started and our blocking kept going from what we did vs. Tulsa. Offensively we needed to put more balls away, but our defense was good enough that we got away with it in the first two sets. I thought Saige (Damrow) played great with 30 digs. Defense definitely won the match today.”

After UNI extended the match with a 25-15 win after intermission, Creighton blasted out to a 12-4 lead in the fourth set by once again dominating at the net.

Individually, Abbey Hayes had 11 kills and four blocks, and Eloise Brandewie added nine kills and nine blocks. Saige Damrow finished with a career-high 30 digs and Trinity Shadd-Ceres had 13 digs with eight kills.

But in the final two matches of the weekend, Rosen’s concern about not being able to put scores away offensively would prove prophetic.

Highlights:

Fifth-ranked Louisville dispatched with the Jays in four sets (25-22, 27-25, 23-25, 25-16), falling behind 12-5 and 18-10 in the first set before a furious rally saw them cut the deficit to 24-22. They staved off four set points before falling 25-22, with Eloise Brandewie getting two kills along the way.

In set two, neither side led by more than two points as the teams went back-and-forth. Trinity Shadd-Ceres went sky-high for this block early in the set:

And later, she got her 100th kill as a Bluejay in just her eighth match, tied for the fastest to reach that milestone by any player in Creighton history (last done by JoDe Cieloha in 1994.)

“I think it starts with her passing; like, she is an elite passer already and I thought that would be the part of her game that would take the longest to get to the level that it’s at,” Rosen said Tuesday. “She continues to be one of the best passers in our gym and I think she passed like, you know, mid-twos this weekend which is uh just an incredible place to be at. Her block was a huge factor this weekend, especially in the Louisville match. You know, we kind of put her one-on-one with their really good slide hitter and I thought she made a huge impact there. Offensively, we just got to continue to get her to be a little bit more consistent. We’re dependent on her to terminate in some big moments. The ability is there, and we’re just going to continue to work to get it more consistent.”

But after another kill by Shadd-Ceres got the Jays to set point at 24-23, they couldn’t finish it off and Louisville escaped with a 27-25 win. That wouldn’t be a problem in the third. She skied for this kill to make it 23-17, then finished it off two points later.

Louisville pulled away midway through the fourth set, turning a 6-6 tie into a 18-9 lead during a run that featured four attack errors and a service error by the Jays.

Shadd-Ceres led Creighton with her third double-double of the fall, owning 17 kills and 14 digs, while Ayden Ames had 11 kills with five blocks and hit .550, while Saige Damrow had 25 digs, becoming the first Bluejay in four seasons to post three straight matches of 20 or more digs.

Highlights:

On Sunday, the second set told the story against Rice as the Jays went 0-for-9 on set points and lost 37-35 in a frame that took 48 minutes to complete. It was the second-highest scoring set in Creighton history, made possible both by mistakes (they had four attack errors and two service errors after the first set point) and missed opportunities (the aforementioned nine, yes, nine set points).

“Of those nine set points, four of them were misses, two of them were swings out of bounds,” Rosen said. “Staying with who we are — like, we are a great serving team, and we have to trust that the same contact you made at 3 will get the job done at 27 or 35 or whatever it was in that second set. I thought we just did some things that were outside of who we are as things got tighter. We got to loosen up and just continue to to do what got us there.”

CU took the third set behind the strength of seven blocks, as Ames had five blocks and Hayes added three of her own.

The Jays led 20-11 and 23-16 in the fourth a 7-0 run by Rice tied the score at 23-all; the Owls saved two more set points by the Bluejays before winning 27-25 for their first win over a top-25 opponent since 2023.

“It’s just a matter of fine-tuning some things,” Rosen said on Tuesday. “We talked a lot about discipline after the Louisville and the Rice matches to be honest. We had a lot of little points here and there that were given away, whether it’s coverage, whether it’s being in the right spot on defense, whether it’s following scout. Some of those things we have to be more disciplined to do. We had too many opportunities this weekend to win sets and to win points, and it’s just little things that we’ve got to continue to do better. But I loved our block defense. I thought we got better offensively. I think our efficiency was the best it’s been all season. And so, lots of things to look positive on. We did enough things to have big leads. We just didn’t finish.”

Highlights:

A win over #1 Nebraska, however unlikely, would go a long way toward making up their early-season struggles. Is this the team that can finally get it done? Rosen said his staff has reminded the team that they have done it — they’ve beaten teams in the same stratosphere as the Huskers, they just haven’t taken down the actual Huskers. Yet.

“We’ve shown so many, like, great snapshots of what we can be when we’re at our best. What we need to do as a coaching staff is figure out how do we get them at their best the longest,” Rosen said. “It’s why we’ve toyed with lineups and and worked on so many different things. I don’t know if we’ve played the same lineup twice yet. We’re continuing to figure out what the pieces are that we need to put in place to keep us great for the longest period of time. And that’s what we’re really searching to find right now.”

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