No. 24 Marquette hosts Saint Louis and Iowa State

MILWAUKEE – The No. 24 Marquette University women's volleyball team hosts Saint Louis on Thursday and Iowa State on Saturday at the Al McGuire Center in its final nonconference matches.

Both matches will air live on GoMarquette.com beginning with Thursday's 11 a.m. Central time first serve in Milwaukee. The match against SLU features Patrick Reed and Michelle Griffin-Wenzel on the call, while Shane Hogan, Zoe Comerford and Aimee Galaszewski will cover Saturday's 2 p.m. match. Live statistics will be available for all three matches, including the Friday neutral site contest between SLU and ISU.

As part of the weekend's matches, the Golden Eagles will honor senior Sarah Rose in her battle against cancer. MU's matches against Creighton last weekend were canceled, so this weekend's action serves as a continuation of Marquette's #Gold4Sarah initiative.

All Marquette's athletic teams wore wear gold jerseys and/or shoelaces in their contests Feb. 17-21 for Rose, who is undergoing treatment for Ewing's Sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. In addition to Rose, the Golden Eagles will honor seniors Sandy Mohr, Martha Konovodoff, Gabbi Martinez and Elizabeth Orf at Thursday's match.

The Golden Eagles (6-2) have notched three-straight sweeps since a 3-2 loss at then-No. 19 Creighton on Friday, Feb. 5. The next day, Marquette picked up its first win over Creighton since 2013 in a sweep at D.J. Sokol Arena. MU middle blocker Savannah Rennie earned BIG EAST Conference Offensive Player of the Week for her play against the Jays, while classmate Taylor Wolf collected honor roll mention on Feb. 9.

In MU's last two matches it swept DePaul on Feb. 12-13, leading Wolf to conference offensive player of the week honors. The Golden Eagles hit .335 as a squad against the Blue Demons and Wolf posted 2.83 kills, 5.17 assts and 2.33 digs per set while hitting .405 herself.

Marquette head coach Ryan Theis, who recently picked up his 150th win on the MU bench at Northern Iowa, is closing in on 300 in his career. He is currently 298-108 in his 13-year career at MU and Ohio.

SLU enters Thursday's match at 5-4 overall following a 3-0 weekend against Davidson in St. Louis. The Billikens are led by senior outside hitter Maya Taylor's 3.36 kills per set, while middle blocker Jillian Mattingly averages 2.36 with a .403 hitting percentage. Through nine matches, SLU is hitting .211 as a team and is averaging 1.97 service aces per frame.

The Cyclones will meet SLU at the Al McGuire Center on Friday at 3 p.m. in their first match since Nov. 21 at TCU. ISU went 5-9 during the fall campaign and ended the semester with three-consecutive wins, one against Kansas and a pair against the Horned Frogs. Junior right-side Eleanor Holthaus led ISU in the fall with 3.09 kills per frame on .305 hitting, along with 31 total blocks in 56 sets.

Marquette has met Saint Louis on 36 previous occasions and most recently owns a 3-0 sweep in the series on Sept. 21, 2019. SLU owns the all-time series with a mark of 20-16.

Both MU and ISU have claimed a pair of victories in their series, with MU pulling out a sweep at the Al McGuire Center on Sept. 16, 2016 in the most recent matchup.

Marquette wraps up its conference slate in March with two road matches apiece against both Butler and Xavier.

Keep up with the Marquette University women's volleyball program through social media by following on Twitter (@MarquetteVB) and Instagram (@MarquetteVB) and 'liking' on Facebook (/MarquetteVolleyball).

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Players Mentioned

Savannah Rennie

Sarah Rose

Taylor Wolf