Saturday was the kind of match Ryan Theis wanted Marquette volleyball to play on its three-games-in-three-days road trip.
Especially when his team had less than 24 hours to recover from a five-set slog vs. Seton Hall Friday, and with its final game of the stretch still left to play tomorrow.
Before leaving for the East Coast, Theis emphasized how important quick and efficient play would be for the Golden Eagles to aid recovery and stay fresh amidst the taxing slate.
While their 3-2 win over the Pirates can only be described as the opposite of that, their 3-0 sweep — despite a close second set — over the Princeton Tigers (8-10) was Theis’ words in action.
And only one look at the box score is needed to understand why.
Three different Marquette players earned double-digit kills: Natalie Ring (12), Ella Foti (11) and Aubrey Hamilton (10). As a team, they hit .275, posting 42 kills and 14 errors on 102 total attacks.
“It’s just so cool that we have so much depth on our team,” primary right side Ella Foti said in a postgame interview.
“And if someone’s not having their best day, we know that someone else is going in for you, and they’re gonna do just fine, and we have a lot of confidence in each other.”
The Golden Eagles (14-6) also had more assists (38-23), aces (11-4) and digs (40-35) than the Tigers, who were limited to hitting just .081 in the match.
“It was just get the W,” Foti said about the team’s mentality coming into today.
The first set was as Marquette-dominant as any its played this season.
The Golden Eagles used an 8-2 run in the middle of the frame to earn a 19-8 lead before closing the period with three straight points. They hit .444 while holding the Pirates to a subpar .000.
The second, though, was much less comfortable for Marquette.
The Tigers never let the Golden Eagles breathe, and it got so close Theis called a timeout after a 4-1 Princeton run cut Marquette’s lead to just one point, 21-20.
But whatever was said in the break worked, as the Golden Eagles took two immediate points out of the timeout, and four of the final five in the set to take a 2-0 match lead.
Marquette took that momentum into the third and final frame to close the match with a 25-13 victory, hitting .300 and holding Princeton to .037.
Tomorrow at Georgetown is the final match of the Golden Eagles’ road trip. First serve is scheduled for 1 p.m. CST.
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.