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Opening Friday Takeaways: Creighton Stuns Purdue
Five ranked-against-ranked matches on the first full night of the season, and the ballot they were seeded by has not moved since 10 August.
No. 13 Creighton beat No. 9 Purdue 3-2 (19-25, 25-22, 25-23, 11-25, 15-11) at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls on Friday night, and it was the first of three ranked opponents Creighton plays there this weekend.
No. 5 Stanford beat No. 6 Wisconsin 3-1 (15-25, 28-26, 25-20, 25-14) in Pittsburgh, and No. 4 Pitt beat No. 15 Kansas 3-1 (25-17, 14-25, 25-23, 25-20) in the same building three hours earlier.
Five of Friday night's matches put a ranked team against a ranked team. Four went to the higher-ranked side. Creighton is the exception and it needed all five sets to be one.
The rankings all five were seeded by are the AVCA preseason ballot of 10 August, which is still the newest poll the association's own page carries. Nineteen days, and nothing on it has moved.
Creighton Had Never Opened Against Three Ranked Teams
Creighton's release before the weekend says the program had never opened a season against three top-25 opponents, and had never played three of them in any weekend in its history. Two more come before Sunday.
Trinity Shadd-Ceres hit 13 kills for Creighton, Abbey Hayes 11 with 12 digs and Jaya Johnson 10. Saige Damrow dug 26 balls, a career high. Creighton served seven aces and put up twelve blocks.
Addy Tindall hit .463 for Purdue with 22 kills on 41 swings and three errors. Taylor Anderson set 44 assists and dug 17. Purdue out-blocked Creighton 16 to 12 and lost anyway.
Purdue won the fourth set by fourteen and lost the fifth by four. Eighteen points of margin swung between two sets played twenty minutes apart, and that swing is the match.
Purdue's second-leading hitter had 19 kills and two first names. Sports Illustrated's Purdue site calls her Mimi Mambu and Creighton's own release calls her Lameen Mambu. Both names go in, because neither of them is a secondary source.
Stanford Lost the First Set 25-15 and Won Anyway
Stanford lost the opening set 25-15, took the second 28-26 on a deuce, and then held Wisconsin to 34 points across the last two sets combined. The second set is where the match went.
Stanford hit .258 to Wisconsin's .164, dug 71 balls, blocked nine and served seven aces. Wisconsin is 1-2, and its one win is over a Louisville side that had beaten the defending national champion the night before.
Kentucky hit .380 against Wisconsin in Milwaukee last week and Stanford hit .258 on Friday, so two of the three teams Wisconsin has played this season have hit a quarter or better against it.
Indiana Hit .043 in Louisville
No. 7 Louisville swept No. 16 Indiana at the L&N Federal Credit Union Arena, where Indiana hit .043 with 22 attack errors against Louisville's .346.
Set scores are not published anywhere we could find. The Indiana Daily Student reports that all three went by five points or more and the last by fourteen. That is a floor and a ceiling rather than a scoreline, and it carries more than six numbers would.
Indiana's problem was the first contact, and its coach put it there too.
Steve Aird is Indiana's head coach. He said these to Savannah Slone of the Indiana Daily Student after the match.
The biggest part of the match, I think, was serving and passing. They served really aggressively. It was tough for T (Teodora Kričković) to run the offense. And then conversely, we didn't really serve very well.
What I told the team is last year we had a win to start the year that kind of like slingshotted of us going forward. This can be the same thing, just a different version. So, you kind of learn, you take your medicine, you get your ass kicked, but at the same time, one bad performance doesn't mean you're a bad team.
No. 12 Arizona State swept No. 14 Minnesota on the same Sioux Falls floor. Arizona State's box score page carries the match score and nothing else, and Minnesota has not posted a recap.
The Best Match of the Weekend Is Sunday
Nebraska and Texas are both at T-Mobile Arena for the Players Era Volleyball Showcase, four teams and $1 million in NIL money. Nebraska plays UNLV at 7 p.m. Central on FS1 and Texas plays TCU at 9.
They play each other at 2:30 p.m. Central on Sunday on FOX. Texas is 1-1, having lost its opener to Arizona State and beaten Marquette in five, and Nebraska has not yet played a match that counts.
We expect Nebraska to win on Sunday and we expect Texas to take a set off them.
