This happened during the broadcast of the Golden Eagles visit to Madison for a spring exhibition match against Wisconsin.
I’m a sucker for a good story, and so a little bit past start time, I turned on Big Ten Network to watch Marquette volleyball visiting Wisconsin for a spring exhibition match on Wednesday night. BTN is broadcasting an exhibition women’s volleyball match! That’s really cool! Let’s give them the viewership!
It doubled as my first chance to take a look at Marquette volleyball under the direction of new head coach Tom Mendoza. It was also a chance to take a look at several of the new faces that are already on the MU roster, not to mention to see how the Golden Eagles spring roster stacks up against Wisconsin’s spring roster. I’m sure Kelly Sheffield’s Badgers will be really good once again this fall, but like Marquette, they’re missing some pieces that will be available come August.
In any case, Wisconsin got the 3-0 sweep, winning with sets of 25-13, 25-19, and 25-21. Marquette had just eight of their 11 players on the roster available for this one, with Calli Kenny, Morgan Daugherty, and Ella Holmstrom sitting out. Hattie Bray led Marquette with eight kills, while freshman Isabela Haggard picked up setting duties and dished out 17 assists. Wisconsin got double digit kills from both freshman Madison Quest and Oregon transfer Mimi Colyer.
But I’m off track.
The real reason why I’m actually typing any of this out is because during the broadcast, Big Ten Network veered away from their heavy bias towards telling Wisconsin-related stories — it’s an exhibition match on the league network, it’s fine — to spend some times talking about what the Golden Eagles are going to be doing this fall in the first official season with Tom Mendoza as head coach. And so, we got a brief “notable non-conference matches” graphic on the screen while that was going on.
The broadcast is breaking some Marquette schedule news, including Tom Mendoza leading the Golden Eagles against Ryan Theis’ Florida Gators
unclear if these are all home games or what
— Anonymous Eagle (@anonymouseagle.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T01:29:39.022Z
We already knew that Wisconsin would be coming to Fiserv Forum on September 17th, that was announced when the volleyball team was honored for their Sweet 16 appearance in 2024 during a men’s basketball game this past season. Given Mendoza’s history as a coach, I’m not expecting a gigantic dropoff in MU’s overall trajectory as a program, so I’m guessing that this yearly match will continue to alternate between Fiserv and the Kohl Center going forward.
The other three games on the graphic were as follows:
Dayton: September 6
Florida: September 19
Minnesota: September 21
I think we knew that the Dayton match was on the books, as it came up during the Western Kentucky match broadcast last fall. Dayton had hosted MU and WKU in 2023, the series moved to Bowling Green last year, and now it’s Marquette’s turn to host those two squads, I believe the story was at the time. At least that’s how I remember it.
Florida and Minnesota are two totally new pieces of information, and the Florida contest immediately asks the question: Did Ryan Theis schedule this match before or after he took the Florida job? Did he put this on the books because playing the Gators is generally a good idea for Marquette’s non-conference strength of schedule, or did he get it on the books because he knew that his new Gators team had a hole in their schedule at the exact same time that his old Golden Eagles team did, and thus both sides benefit?
Dayton is coming off a 31-3 season that got them all the way to the Sweet 16 with their loss in Bowling Green to Marquette as their only regular season loss of the entire season. Wisconsin posted a 26-7 record and reached the Elite 8 before bowing out to Nebraska. Florida went 23-8 and reached the Sweet 16 before program legend Mary Wise retired, thus prompting Theis’ move to Gainesville. Minnesota had the “worst” season of the four squads here, as they were “only” 21-11, but that was still good enough for an at-large berth in the NCAA tournament and they beat Western Kentucky to get to the round of 32.
In short: Yep, those are definitely notable non-conference contests on Marquette’s schedule for the 2025 season. We got the full 2024 schedule in June last year, so it might be a while before we get the full 2025 slate in our grubby little mitts.
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