November 5th and November 6th, 2011. Marquette volleyball, less than one month away from the program’s first ever NCAA tournament appearance, went on a weekend road trip and lost 3-1 at Cincinnati and 3-0 at Louisville on consecutive days, snapping a four match winning streak.
That was the last time Marquette volleyball lost back-to-back regular season Big East matches.
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Until now.
On Friday, Marquette went to Washington, D.C., and ended up with a five set loss to Georgetown. We’ll get to the details in a second, but thanks to DePaul toppling Villanova at about the same time as MU’s loss to the Hoyas, that set up a clash for third place in the Big East in the Philadelphia suburbs on Saturday night. That one also did not go Marquette’s way, as the Golden Eagles took the first set in a marathon 35-33 victory, but then lost the next three somewhat quietly, never reaching 20 points in any of the three frames.
Back to back Big East regular season losses for the first time in nearly 14 years.
If you want to count any losses to any Big East teams, we only go back to 2016, when the Golden Eagles lost the regular season finale on the road against Xavier, then lost again to the Musketeers six days later in Indianapolis in the Big East tournament.
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I have more bad news.
Officially, right now, as the standings sit, Marquette would miss the Big East tournament if it started on Sunday. Four teams get in. 10-0 Creighton, 9-1 Xavier, 7-3 Villanova are your top three. Marquette is in fourth at 6-4…… tied with the Georgetown team that they just lost to, and thus the Hoyas have the tiebreaker and take the fourth spot in the field. That’s the only meeting between MU and GU this season, so they will keep that tiebreaker and MU has no chance to even the season series. Oh, right: Marquette is hosting the Big East tournament this year, and thus, playing in said tournament is officially at risk.
The Georgetown loss is bad. It’s really bad. Not just in the “Georgetown won a set from MU for the first time since 2019” way or the “Georgetown snapped a 22 match losing streak and beat Marquette for the first time since 2010” way.
The method of it is bad. Marquette fell behind 4-0 right out of the gate and fell back behind by four points at 7-3 before losing the set 25-22. Yes, they would obviously like those four points back. At the end of the fourth frame, Marquette was up 22-18 and on the verge of a 3-1 win. 7-1 Georgetown to close the set and force the fifth set. 15-5 Hoyas in the fifth with Georgetown going up 4-0 and 7-1 to kind of end the thing before it got started.
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29-9 Georgetown at the beginning and at the end of the match. In between, as Marquette went up 2-1 and holding a 22-18 lead in the fourth? 91-72 Marquette. The Golden Eagles won the majority of the points in the match by a +19 margin, but they lost because they ended up -20 on the points that determined who won the match. More literally, -10 on the decisive points of the match, that fifth set, but MU was in big trouble long before that frame started off.
What it means for Marquette’s season is bad. Through the end of matches on Sunday, October 19, Georgetown’s RPI was sitting at #148 and they hadn’t beaten anyone in the top 160 of the RPI. Marquette in that same RPI report? #37. The NCAA’s RPI/Team Sheet archive only goes back to the 2019 season for women’s volleyball, at least in the publicly visible section. In the past five normal length/time seasons combined, Marquette hasn’t lost to a team lower than #80 in the RPI, and that one was last year when MU ended the season in the Sweet 16 anyway. MU did take a loss to #217 Butler in the timeshifted 2020 season, but between COVID, how short that season was, and the limited NCAA tournament field, it’s hard to say exactly how baffling or damaging that loss was.
It’s a team sport, you win and lose as a team. But I’ll tell you this much, it’s going to be hard as hell to tell Natalie Ring that she bears any fault for what happened at McDonough Arena on Friday night. A match high 26 kills on a match high 49 swings for a .429 hitting percentage. An assist, four service aces, three solo blocks and an assisted block, six digs. Marquette’s top attacker personally accounted for 33.5 of Marquette’s 82 points in the contest.
I said it earlier in the season that MU can not have multiple attackers at the top of the offense having a bad night and still win, this team is not strong enough to withstand that problem. Elena Radeff: .111 hitting on 18 swings. Hattie Bray: .000 hitting on 21 swings. Emma Parks: -0.033 hitting on 30 swings.
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14 service errors. Nine reception errors. Nine Georgetown service aces. Those are force multipliers to the Marquette attackers having bad nights, and it all adds up to a horrific loss that got compounded one night later.
I want to make this clear: It was 24-23 Marquette with Elena Radeff serving as the Golden Eagles had taken three of the last four points. The set was there for them to win.
Villanova fended off set point four times, twice on MU service errors. Marquette had to fend off set point six times, with the last coming as a Natalie Ring kill to tie the set at 33. Allie Korba, getting her first start of the season, perhaps because Isabela Haggard came up from a diving dig attempt late against Georgetown holding her hand in pain, scored a kill for point #34, and the Golden Eagles went back to Ring to close out the first set, 35-33. It was a no-defense-allowed special, with Marquette hitting .418 and Villanova hitting .341, and the Golden Eagles headed into Set #2 with a 1-0 lead.
That’s about where the good news ended, and the announcing crew at Jake Nevin Field House raised a valid point about this match. Sure, both of these two teams lost on Friday night, thus creating urgency in stopping the problems. However, Villanova lost in four sets at home and walked back to their dorms and apartments. Marquette lost in five and then either A) had to spend the night in Washington, D.C. then bus up to Philadelphia, a two hour drive, on Saturday morning, or B) took that bus ride after a five set match that ended at roughly speaking 9:30pm local time. Rough estimate? That bus didn’t leave McDonough Arena until at least 11pm if they left that night. That is a long, emotionally and mentally draining bus ride, no matter when it was taken. How much did that travel schedule going against MU and in favor of VU play a part in what happened next?
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What happened next was Villanova scoring seven straight to close out the second set and flip 19-18 Marquette to 25-19 Villanova. What happened next was Villanova roaring through the Golden Eagles to turn an 8-5 lead to a 16-5 lead and run away with the third set, 25-13. What happened next was Villanova getting an edge on Marquette at 16-12 and holding the Golden Eagles at arm’s length the rest of the way. MU never got closer than two points after that, and the Wildcats scored four of the final five points of the night for a 25-19 set win and a 3-1 victory.
It is Villanova’s first win over Marquette since 2017 and their first non-five set win since 2015. It snaps a 14 match winning streak by the Golden Eagles, and the three sets won by the Wildcats matches their set victory total against Marquette since 2019 combined.
Up Next: Bad news, that’s what’s next. If Marquette wants to avoid their first three match Big East losing streak since 2009, they have to go to Chicago on Wednesday night and beat that DePaul team that just beat Villanova. After that? They go to Omaha on Saturday for a match against #13 Creighton. Marquette hasn’t lost four straight Big East matches since 2008, and unless they find a way to beat DePaul or shock Creighton, that’s a thing that’s on the table.
