Tom Mendoza bolsters his first Golden Eagles roster with veterans at setter and middle blocker.
Marquette volleyball head coach Tom Mendoza has his first two announced recruits.
On Friday — although the press release is dated for Wednesday, for some reason — Marquette volleyball announced the addition of two transfers for the 2025 season. Allie Korba, a 5’9” setter, is transferring over from Central Michigan for her final season of eligibility, while Julia Stanev, a 6’3” middle blocker, moves from Eastern Illinois to Marquette with two years of eligibility remaining.
Let’s go to the Marquette press release for the details on both women.
First, Korba:
Korba, a 5-foot-9 setter from Arlington Heights, Illinois, was the 2024 Mid-American Conference Setter of the Year at Central Michigan University after posting 1,137 assists over 126 sets in 2024. She played under current MU assistant coach Stef Jankiewicz the past three seasons in Mount Pleasant and helped the Chippewas to a No. 2 seed in the MAC tournament this past fall.
“We are excited to add Allie to the team,” Mendoza said. “She brings experience and leadership, coming in the reigning MAC Setter of the Year. We know Allie’s presence will be a difference maker in our gym.”
She posted 11 double-doubles with averages of 9.02 assists and 2.04 digs per frame in 2024. Korba notched a career-high 58 assists in a five-set victory at Akron in the regular season finale on Nov. 16 alongside nine digs and three blocks.
The John Hersey High School graduate played for Sky High Volleyball Club and spent her junior year as a prep player at Badger High School in Lake Geneva.
You have to figure that Korba made the transfer move largely because she wanted to tag along with Stef Jankiewicz, a two-time Missouri Valley Setter of the Year back in the day, after her 2024 campaign went so well under Jankiewicz’s direction. Barring a gigantic surprise, Korba will be Marquette’s starting setter in the fall. It’s either her or freshman Isabela Haggard, who did start at setter for Marquette in the spring matches, or Calli Kenny, who is listed as a setter/defensive specialist/right side hitter combination on the roster….. and had just one assist in her 14 sets played as a freshman in 2024.
And Stanev:
Stanev is a 6-foot-3 middle blocker from Reggio Emilia, Italy, a city northeast of Bologna located between Parma and Modena. She played two seasons at Eastern Illinois and was among the team’s block leaders both seasons, recording 99.0 total blocks as a freshman in 2023 and 79.0 last fall. Stanev averaged 0.96 blocks per frame over 54 matches in her first two seasons while hitting .250 (152-47-420) with 0.82 kills and 1.37 points per set.
“Adding Julia to the team will provide great depth and experience to our middle group,” Mendoza said. “She can impact the game both with her block and attack and she’s excited to compete at a highest level.”
Stanev played against the Golden Eagles twice while at EIU, once in the 2024 season opener and an NCAA First Round match in 2023 at Purdue. She finished her freshman season sixth in the Ohio Valley Conference with 1.04 blocks per set while helping the Panthers to an OVC title and a 28-5 overall record.
Stanev attended Liceo Linguistico G. Marconi School in Parma and played for Pallavolo Alsenese in Piacenza.
Well, we may as well pull up Stanev’s stats from those two matches, huh?
In 2023, she had one kill on two swings while only appearing in one of the three sets as the Golden Eagles swept the Panthers.
In 2024 — which was technically EIU’s very next match after losing to MU in the NCAA tournament — Stanev appeared in two of the sets in MU’s 3-0 sweep, and had an error on three swings.
Hattie Bray is guaranteed a starting spot at middle blocker, but the only other options on the roster are Morgan Daugherty, who saw intermittent playing time for Marquette in 2024, or freshman Kiera Schmidt, who enrolled at the start of spring semester. There seems to be an easy path for Stanev to get playing time right away, but we’ll have to wait to see what the rotation actually looks like in August.
Marquette hasn’t kicked their roster page over to 2025 yet, so I presume that no one is leaving from the spring roster. As far as I can tell, the three signed freshmen are still on track to enroll this summer, as is transfer Elena Radeff, all of whom committed and signed with Ryan Theis before he left for the Florida job. We’ll have to wait and see how all the pieces fit together, but it seems pretty clear from the schedule — depending on how much Mendoza was involved in picking the matches — that Marquette intends to continue being nationally relevant in 2025, no matter who’s pulling on the jerseys.
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