Red Storm Falls to Marquette in Regular Season Finale

Saturday, November 17

Milwaukee, Wis. (Al McGuire Center)

7:00 PM

St. John's University

23-10, 12-6

Marquette

25-5, 15-2

Team	1	2	3	Final F
St. John's	24	19	15	0
Marquette	26	25	25	3

Red Storm Falls to Marquette in Regular Season Finale

11/17/2018 8:48:00 PM | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

St. John’s finishes regular season 23-10, will play Marquette again in BIG EAST semifinals

By: Eric Robinson

Box Score

The St. John's volleyball team fell in its regular season finale on Saturday at Marquette in three sets.

This marks the first of two consecutive matches the Red Storm will have with the Golden Eagles as both teams have already been locked into a semifinal matchup in next week's BIG EAST Championships hosted by Creighton.

Efrosini Alexakou led the team with nine kills in the match with Rachele Rastelli right behind her with eight. The Red Storm finished with 6.0 blocks as a team with Ariadni Kathariou leading the way individually with four.

Erica Di Maulo led the way for the Johnnies with 25 assists in the three sets, while Amanda Sanabia finished with a team-high 14 digs. Di Maulo has now led the team in assists in every regular season match in 2018.

The first set went back and forth before St. John's fell 26-24. After Marquette jumped out to a 7-3 lead, Hanna Wagner put home a kill that sparked a 6-1 run for the Johnnies that put them up one. Wagner would finish the match with six kills and a hitting percentage of .385, which led all Johnnies. Alexakou began a 6-0 run of her own later in the frame that put the Red Storm up 19-14.

Marquette would tie it at 22-22 and with the score knotted at 24, the Golden Eagles would score back-to-back points to take a 1-0 set advantage.

The Red Storm would fall 25-19 after a comeback effort midway through the frame fell short. With Marquette leading 21-11, the Johnnies used the first two collegiate kills for Jovana Askovic as part of a 7-1 run that cut Marquette's lead to four. Askovic would finish the match with her first five kills at St. John's. Five of those points came consecutively after a kill by a kill by Alexakou.

However, the Golden Eagles would take three of the next four points to take the second set and a 2-0 set lead.

The Red Storm could not extend the match to a fourth set and dropped set three 25-15. St. John's hung with the Golden Eagles early in the set forcing a 6-6 tie before Marquette started to pull away. A 6-0 run put the Johnnies down six, and the team would not get closer than five points at any point in the third.

The Johnnies will take their first trip to the BIG EAST Championships since 2012 next weekend when they play Marquette again on Friday at 3 p.m. The Red Storm will serve as the three seed in the four-team event and will look to win its first BIG EAST Championship since 2007, when the Johnnies won 33 matches and made it to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.