#6 Volleyball Hosts Ole Miss With Sweet 16 Bid On The Line

2024 NCAA Tournament - Second Round
Match #33: Ole Miss Rebels (18-11) at #6 Creighton (30-2)
Omaha, Neb. • Friday, Dec. 6 • 7:00 p.m.
| LIVE VIDEO ($) | LIVE STATS | CU NOTES | OLE MISS NOTES | PROGRAM |

• Second-seeded and sixth-ranked Creighton Volleyball (30-2) meets Ole Miss (18-11) on Friday night at 7 p.m. with a berth in next week's Sweet 16 on the line. The match will take place in Omaha, Neb., inside D.J. Sokol Arena.
    Jon Schriner, Shannon Smolinski and Ana Bellinghausen will call the action on ESPN+ and for a fee at http://watchespn.com.

• Creighton is 2-0 all-time against Ole Miss, sweeping the Rebels on Sept. 6, 2008 in Jacksonville, Ala,. then again on Dec. 2, 2021 in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament in Omaha.
    Kirsten Bernthal Booth is 2-0 against Ole Miss, but has never coached against Bre Henry.

• Creighton is seeking its fourth trip to the Sweet 16 in program history, having been there in 2015, 2016 and 2023. The 2016 team also won in the Regional Semifinals to make the program's lone Elite Eight appearance to date.
    Ole Miss won its first NCAA Tournament match in five tries yesterday.

• Last night marked the 500th victory on the Creighton sideline under Kirsten Bernthal Booth. She is now 500-191 in 22 seasons with the Bluejays since taking over a 3-23 program prior to the 2003 campaign.
    The only other coaches besides Booth to win 500 times as a Creighton coach have been Brent Vigness (819, Softball), Ed Servais (678, Baseball), Mary Higgins (564, Softball) and Tom Lilly (542, Men's & Women's Tennis).

• Last night's victory was Creighton's 23rd in a row, tying a program record first done by CU's 2016 team that reached the Elite Eight.
    Creighton has dropped just four sets while compiling those 23 victories.
    The 23 wins in a row is the nation's longest active win streak after Western Kentucky's 24-match streak was snapped with a First Round loss yesterday to Minnesota.
    The second-longest active win streak belongs to Northern Iowa (20), a team Creighton swept on Sept. 13 that features Kirsten Bernthal Booth's daughter Reese Booth.

• Creighton can tie a program record with its 31st victory should it beat Ole Miss on Friday.
    CU's 2021 team finished 31-4, with its final win coming in Omaha against Ole Miss in the NCAA Tournament.

• Creighton improved to 18-0 at home with last night's victory, extending a program record for home wins in a season.
    Creighton has also won a program-record 31 straight home matches, tied with Pittsburgh for the nation's second-longest active home win streak behind only Nebraska (41).
    Creighton lost just three sets at home in 13 matches last year and have dropped only two frames in 18 home matches this fall.

• Creighton owns 43 consecutive wins over unranked teams.

• Thursday was Creighton's 44th straight win when winning the first set, moving the Bluejays 196-4 in its last 200 such matches.

• Creighton is 15-13 all-time in the NCAA Tournament and improved to 11-3 in the First Round last night. The Jays are 6-4 in NCAA Tournament home matches.
    Creighton enters Friday with a 3-7 mark in the Second Round, with the previous wins coming in 2015 (at North Carolina), 2016 (at #4 Kansas) and 2023 (Minnesota).

• Each of the last five matches played by Ole Miss have gone exactly five sets.
    Creighton has not played a fifth set since a Sept. 15 contest at No. 4 Louisville.
    Creighton is 0-2 this year in five-set matches, and 47-0 in matches to last four sets or less since Oct. 7, 2023.
    Four of Creighton's last five NCAA Tournament eliminations have come in five sets (2023-Louisville, 2022-Auburn, 2020-Morehead State, 2019-Minnesota).
    Though the note above may not reflect it, Creighton's actually been one of the nation's top five set teams in 22 seasons under Kirsten Bernthal Booth, going 70-41 in five-setters.
    Creighton is 19-5 all-time in five-set contests inside D.J. Sokol Arena.
    Creighton has won at least one five-set match in every season since 1995...but is 0-2 entering Friday.

• Creighton is 10-2 this season against teams that qualified for the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

• Creighton and Ole Miss share two common opponents this fall.
    Both teams own a home sweep over Drake.
    Creighton swept Missouri at home, while Ole Miss lost a five-set home match to the Tigers.

• Creighton did not trail in either the first or third set yesterday. It's the 32nd and 33rd times in the last 66 sets it has played that it did not trail in.

• The BIG EAST went 4-0 yesterday, sweeping all four postseason matches.
    Creighton swept South Dakota and Marquette blanked Florida Gulf Coast University in the NCAA Tournament, while UConn topped Mercer and DePaul erased Toledo in the NIVC.

• Creighton's .414 hitting percentage on Thursday was its best hitting percentage ever in an NCAA Tournament match, surpassing the previous high of .375 in 2018 vs. South Dakota.
    It was the ninth time in the last 22 matches that Creighton has hit .400 or better.

• Last night's crowd of 2,517 pushed Creighton's home attendance for the year to 41,853 fans, an average of 2,325.
    It's the second-most fans CU has ever drawn in one home season (47,632 in 2018), and the average of 2,325 trails only 2,802 in 2018 and 2,459 in 2022, though it's worth noting the 2018 and 2022 crowd totals were inflated by a five-figure home crowd held less than a mile away at CHI Health Center Omaha.

• The matches hosted by Creighton on Thursday drew 2,517 fans, tied for the eighth-largest crowd in the 16-year history of the facility.
    That ranked fifth-best of nine sites that opened NCAA Tournament play on Thursday.
Host School    Crowd
Wisconsin    6050
Texas    3918
Utah    3089
Oregon    2531
Creighton    2517
Purdue    2415
Kentucky    2308
SMU    1911
Baylor    836

• Kendra Wait set a school-record on Thursday by playing in her 117th victory.
    She also tied a D.J. Sokol Arena record by playing in her 59th match in the facility.
    Wait is part of a senior class that is an incredible 117-16 in the last four years and has won both the BIG EAST regular-season and tournament title all four seasons.

• Kendra Wait tied a career-high with nine kills on Thursday as the two-time BIG EAST Player of the Year hit .750 in 12 attempts.
    Wait also had 35 assists and seven digs as she narrowly missed her school-record 73rd double-double. It's the sixth time this fall that Wait finished either a dig or kill shy of a double-double.

• The first NCAA Tournament match for Norah Sis and Kendra Wait in 2021 was a 3-0 sweep (25-21, 25-15, 25-13) over Ole Miss in which both women started and had a double-double.
    Sis had 16 kills and 10 digs on 36 errorless swings, hitting .444.
    Wait had 31 assists and 13 digs while hitting .800 in five swings.

• Norah Sis (1,631) moved past Leah Ratzlaff (1,622) for second in Creighton history in career kills on Thursday. Only Jaali Winters (1,843) has more.
    Sis also had three blocks, moving her past 200 in her career with 201.

• Sydney Breissinger's nine digs yesterday helped her surpass 500 in her career, as the sophomore now owns 501.

• Junior Ava Martin served a pair of aces on Friday, giving her a BIG EAST-leading 51 on the season. The only Bluejay player with more is Molly Moran, who had 59 in 2000. Madelyn Cole also had 51 aces in 2018.

• Ava Martin had 13 kills in Thursday's victory, her 15th straight match with 10 or more kills. That's tied for the fifth-longest streak in program history.

• Creighton libero Maddy Bilinovic picked up her fifth career kill, and first of the season, last night. Bilinovic also led all players with 17 digs in the match.

• Elise Goetzinger spent the previous four years at Kentucky, where the Wildcats went 5-0 against Ole Miss.
    In those matches, Goetzinger collected 17 kills, four blocks and two digs while hitting .300 in 40 swings across nine sets that she played.

#6 Volleyball Hosts Ole Miss With Sweet 16 Bid On The Line

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Players Mentioned

Maddy Bilinovic

Sydney Breissinger

Elise Goetzinger

Ava Martin

Norah Sis

Kendra Wait