The two best teams get new head coaches as most of the all-conference performers from last season depart. GET READY FOR CHANGES!
HELLO AND WELCOME TO AUGUST!
The Marquette volleyball season starts 28 days from today, but history has shown us that the Big East tends to like releasing the volleyball preseason all-conference honors first out of the three fall sports we cover here at Anonymous Eagle. As such, it’s a good day to publish some predictions for the league in volleyball this fall.
We’ll get into it a little bit more in a second, but 2025 has a chance to be a wild and wooly year in Big East volleyball. Creighton and Marquette have separated themselves as the clear top two programs in this league over the last several years, but both squads changed head coaches in the offseason. Marquette’s Ryan Theis moved on to take the Florida job in the wake of Mary Wise’s retirement, while Creighton’s Kirsten Bernthal Booth stepped down from her position. It was Next Man Up in Omaha, as associate head coach Brian Rosen was promoted to the top job, while Marquette lured away South Carolina head coach Tom Mendoza to take over their program.
Anyway, the sense of the league for this coming season is definitely one of questions that need to be answered by the time we get to the Big East tournament in Milwaukee the week before Thanksgiving. Until then, though, it seems like an awful lot is going to be Business As Usual until proven otherwise.
For example, our predictions of how the Big East coaches are going to vote for the preseason honors starts exactly where you think it should: A Bluejay.
Preseason Player of the Year: Ava Martin, OH, Creighton
She’s the Big East’s leading returning attacker from last season after averaging 3.66 kills per set and ranking in the top 10 in hitting percentage. As we’ll get to in a second, there are no returning setters in the Big East that could challenge Martin’s spot here, and neither of the two best middle blockers coming back were even in the top 20 in kills/set last season. Unless I’m missing an incoming transfer somewhere that’s an All-American, Ava Martin is the only possible choice here.
Preseason All-Big East Team
McKenna Brand, L, Connecticut
Hattie Bray, MB, Marquette
Erin Jones, RS/S, St. John’s
Allie Korba, S, Marquette
Ava Martin, OH, Creighton
Kiera Reinhardt, MB, Creighton
Emma Workmeister, OH, Connecticut
Let’s just get straight to it: The Big East had 18 all-conference honorees last season. Six of them return for 2025. Five of them are on this list.
Three of the five were unanimous choices for all-Big East at the end of the 2024 regular season: Ava Martin, Erin Jones, and Hattie Bray. Boom, they’re in, no questions asked. Kiera Reinhardt is the only other returning middle blocker on the all-league list, and she led the conference in blocks per set last year. I needed at least one more middle on the list, done.
That’s two hitters — yeah, Erin Jones is listed as a right side/setter, but she didn’t really do much in the way of setting for assists last season — and two middles. I need to get to seven women, and two of the three I need to add have to be a setter and a defensive specialist/libero. The DS/L spot is simple, even without a returning player from the all-conference team: DePaul’s Rachel Krasowski was Libero of the Year last season while leading the Big East in digs per set, UConn’s McKenna Brand was second in digs/set. In goes Brand, beating out Rashanny Solano Smith from St. John’s by 0.02 digs/set.
The setter was a harder situation. All four of the setters who averaged over 10 assists per set last season are now gone. At some point, when you dip below eight assists per set, you’re starting to get silly when you’re trying to proclaim someone as the best setter in the league heading into next year. You know what’s not silly? Declaring the 2024 MAC Setter of the Year to be the best setter in the Big East heading into the 2025 season. Allie Korba’s at Marquette now, so in she goes.
That left me one more spot to fill, and I had two non-unanimous outside hitters on last year’s all-Big East squad. Emma Workmeister finished #6 in the Big East in kills per set last season, making her third amongst returning players, and she led the league in aces per set, too. Apologies to Villanova’s Abby Harrell, but you gotta draw a line somewhere, and “12th in kills per set last year” was the line.
Top 5 Teams
1 — Creighton
2 — Marquette
3 — UConn
4 — St. John’s
5 — Villanova
Yeah, I’m pretty much just taking the team names from the all-conference team and putting them down here. Two Bluejays, two Golden Eagles, two Huskies, and a Red Storm to get to seven all-Big East players, and there’s your top four teams. As it turns out, the top three are the top three from last year’s standings, and I’m keeping them in the same order here. I don’t think the gap between Creighton, Marquette, and UConn is quite as deep at 18-0, 16-2, and 12-6 like it was last year, not with the Bluejays and the Golden Eagles undergoing some notable roster changes on top of their head coaching changes. However, until I see something different happen in this league, I’m sticking with them as the top two teams.
Villanova gets the #5 spot as an apology for leaving Abby Harrell out of the all-conference race. The Wildcats have one of the six best returning players in the conference if you measure by last year’s all-BE honors, so it seems fair to have them here, even if 5th place would mean missing the conference tournament this year.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle