RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Is Luanna Markus Marquette’s starting setter out of the gate this fall? | Credit: Marquette University
HELLO!
It’s time for more Marquette volleyball season previewing! We’ve already talked about the returning players on the Marquette roster . If you haven’t taken a peek at that yet, please do so. It’s not very long, but knowing what head coach Tom Mendoza does have coming back from his first season in charge is useful to understanding how Mendoza has to get quality performances from several of the newcomers in order to keep MU’s NCAA tournament streak running.
For the returning players, we kind of just went in order of importance to the Golden Eagles a year ago because we only had five women to talk about. We have twice as many newcomers, heck, there’s four new outside hitters alone. So: We’ll go outside hitter, then setter, then middle blocker, and then wrap up with defensive specialist. Sound good? Let’s go!
OUTSIDE HITTER
Let’s start things off with one of Marquette’s transfers, because Carson Tyler (#20, 5’10” junior, Pavilion, New York) is arguably MU’s top attacker right now. Hey, all I’m saying is I don’t see anyone else on the roster holding a 2024 Freshman of the Year trophy next to their 2025 Player of the Year trophy. That’s what Tyler did at Ball State the past two seasons, earning both of those awards in the MAC and getting First Team All-Conference honors both years as well. She averaged a team best 4.18 kills per set last season while hitting .234, and she also added 2.65 digs (#2 on the team) and 0.42 blocks (#4) per set. Tyler also had 43 aces a year ago in Ball State’s 31 matches, but she also misfired on 43 serves, too. Because you’re wondering: Natalie Ring hit .274 last year as Marquette’s #1 attacker. Elena Radeff was at .248, so at the very least, Marquette is going to have to find a way to make Tyler more efficient.
It’s possible that one of the three freshmen hitters overtakes both Tyler and Emma Parks as Marquette’s top attacker at some point along the way this season. Caydence Doolan (#4, 5’11” freshman, Hagerstown, Maryland) certainly looks like she has the high school career to step right in and take some swings in her first year. What else would you say about a three-time Maryland state champ who was also the Gatorade Player of the Year for Maryland in 2025 AND the AVCA Region 2 Player of the Year AND an AVCA Second Team All-American? Feels like she should be a core component of the team out of the gate, even if Marquette didn’t need players taking swings, right? That point holds, but it’s worth mentioning that Doolan was not participating in the Blue & Gold Scrimmage last weekend, and in fact, it appeared that she wasn’t even on the sideline.
The fact that Allie Beers (#6, 6’0” freshman, Slinger, Wisconsin) missed most of her senior season with shoulder surgery should hint that maybe she isn’t going to be ready to go one year later. She earned First Team all-state honors as a junior, so clearly she can play a little bit of volleyball, but shoulders are kind of important for a hitter. Still, there she is, all over the place in photos from Marquette’s spring matches since she enrolled early like both Tyler and Doolan did as well.
See?
Doesn’t look like she’s taking it easy on the shoulder, does it? Oh, and yes: Allie Beers is wearing #6. Yes, you can go buy “6 Beers” shirts from the NIL store right now .
There are two more freshmen in the position group that weren’t with the program for spring action. Tani Juric (#11, 6’5” freshman, Ankaran, Slovenia) signed on with Marquette back in early March, so obviously not in enough time to get to Milwaukee to start classes in January. She has a long history of playing for the Slovenian junior national team, landing on the roster for their U17, U18, and U20 teams in the past, and as far as that last part goes: It’s worth noting that both she and her twin sister Emi — we’ll get to her — only turned 19 in April. Juric has also played with the Slovenian senior national team, including as a part of their qualifying run for the European championships. In terms of lower level competition, her official team bio is littered with “best” this and “best” that for various national level competitions. It’s hard to ignore her height here as well, as she’s the tallest player on the roster by two inches. Tallest player + years of international competition experience…. She’s only just been with the team since practices spooled up for camp to start the year, but you can see how she might jump to the front of the line since Marquette needs a tippy top attacker, right?
That leaves us with Aubrey Hicks (#12, 6’0” freshman, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin), and it’s time for some full transparency here. My process for these previews is to create a list of the newcomers at each position on a notepad and then handwrite notes about what I want to mention about each one. That allows me to look at the notepad and figure out what order to go in. The reason why I mention this is because on my notepad, I have Aubrey Hicks as a Middle Blocker, but because I’ve been writing these previews in bits and pieces over the span of a few days, as I have the Marquette roster sitting open on Monday, August 10, Hicks is listed an Opposite Hitter. That’s interesting. Hicks won a 2025 Division 1 state title in and I do mean that she won it, to a certain extent, because she had 13 kills and eight digs in Hamilton’s 3-0 sweep of defending champion Divine Savior Holy Angels. Her career stats do not bear out that she projects as a workhorse of a hitter immediately: 1.8 kills/set, .219 career hitting. However, no one was really tearing it up for Hamilton last year either in terms of kills average or hitting percentage , so I don’t know how to assess that.
SETTER
Based purely on “who’s on the roster,” then Marquette’s season is going to be dictated by how fast Luanna Markus (#3, 5’11” freshman, Chopinzinho, Brazil) acclimates to Division 1 volleyball. S...
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