1. The Blue Demons took on No. 1 seed Creighton University at the Big East Tournament semifinals on Friday. It was their first appearance at the Big East tournament in program history, however the Blue Demons were not able to defeat the top seed and fell to Creighton 3-0.

The Blue Demons looked out of sync throughout the game, while the Blue Jays clicked early.

The first play of the game resulted in a Creighton point, but head coach Marie Zidek challenged the play. However, Creighton earned the point.

Creighton continued to dominate in the first set, while the Blue Demons made mistakes on simple plays in the back row and in front of the net.

Every time the Blue Demons pulled in close to Creighton’s lead, the Blue Jays pulled ahead while DePaul continued to make mistakes on their side of the net.

The Blue Demons went on a run late in set one, but Creighton was able to close out the first set and defeat the Blue Demons by a score of 25-16.

Set two started in the same way, with Creighton dominating early while the Blue Demons looked lost at times on the court while they made errors that Creighton didn’t.

The Blue Demons challenged Creighton a bit towards the end of set two and scored four straight points to make the score 22-13.

However, it wasn’t enough to do damage against the strong Creighton team and the Blue Jays won set two 25-15.

DePaul struggled early in set three as Creighton scored the first six points. The Blue Demons eventually landed on the board with a kill from right side hitter Emma Price, followed by a kill from outside hitter Jill Pressly.

However, the Blue Jays bounced right back and scored the next four straight points until a kill from Pressly broke up their run.

Creighton hit a 10-point lead when they reached 14 points, but Zidek challenged that there was not a touch on the play. After a few moments of deliberation, the officials awarded the point to the Blue Demons.

After that play, DePaul scored the next two to go on a small run, but Creighton bounced back soon after and regained their 10-point lead with a score of 18-8.

While DePaul went on another five-point run late in set three, Creighton was able to win the set 25-18 off a service error by the Blue Demons.

While the way that the season ended was not what the Blue Demons wanted, the team still made history by earning a spot at the Big East Tournament for the first time as the finished with a conference record of 12-6 in the regular season.

Earlier in the week, DePaul’s coaching staff was named the Big East Coaching Staff of the Year.

Additionally, senior middle blocker Donna Brown, Price and Pressly were all named to the 2021 All-Big East Team.