“This game was so good for us. It was exactly what we needed. We need to know that when we get to the tournament it’s okay to go to a 5th set because we have that confidence that we can dig down deep and get the win.”
Those were the words of Creighton junior outside hitter Jaali Winters after the team went down 0-2, and came back to win a 5-setter against Butler on Friday the 13th.
Winters, head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth, and sophomore defensive specialist Brittany Witt all echoed the same sentiment in their post-game press conference: that this was a character-building win for the Blue Jays.
The win pushes Creighton, along with another one on Sunday against Xavier, pushes the Blue Jays to 7-1 in the Big East this season. That leaves them only one game in the win column behind Marquette (who beat the Blue Jays on October 5th) in the conference standings They are currently ranked #14 in the latest VolleyMob.com Power Rankings, and the Big East should be at least a two-bid league this season. The conference is one of the few D1 conferences that decides their auto bid to the NCAA Championship tournament via the conference tournament, so top 4 is key for teams to keep their season alive.
Even if they were to lose that auto-bid (the conference is very good and deep this year), Creighton’s overall resume should still be enough for an at-large bid: they have wins over Pitt, Washington, Kentucky, Northern Iowa, and Kansas (in a 3-0 sweep) already this season.
The team returns to action this weekend with a match against St. John’s on Friday and then their annual Pink Out game for breast cancer awareness on Sunday against Seton Hall.
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