The Badgers are ready for a big run after Sarah Franklin's career night

At Big Ten Media Days, three weeks into the season, Wisconsin Badgers volleyball head coach Kelly Sheffield said something that could be considered a curse. A Sheffield hex, if you will.

“If we can stay healthy and get everyone singing the same song, then we have a chance.”

Staying healthy — and therefore getting everyone singing the same song — has proven to be a challenge for the Badgers since Sheffield tempted fate in early August. After an offseason injury to Sarah Franklin, Julia Orzol and Anna Smrek began the season with ankle injuries, and then the Badgers had to deal with another 1.5 setbacks for Tuesday's game against Marquette at the Kohl Center.

New setter Charlie Fürbringer came onto the Kohl Center court limping with one foot in a walking boot, and veteran Devyn Robinson began the game on the bench with a bandage around her right shoulder.

Adversity is a word that springs to mind when thinking about the young season, and the Badgers faced another test in the I-94 intrastate rivalry game. It was a game the Badgers could not lose if they wanted to keep their hopes of a top-four finish in the NCAA alive.

And you just don't want to lose to Marquette.

It wasn't great having Fürbringer in walking shoes, but there was one bright spot for the Badgers: trained senior setter Carly Anderson.

“That's why we brought in Carly,” Sheffield said after the game. “She's probably one of the most experienced setters in the country, entering her fifth year and has spent her entire career as a setter.”

Anderson hasn't played much this season and was shaky (along with the rest of the team, let's be honest) during her time in the third-set disaster against TCU, but the Canadian more than rose to the occasion on Tuesday night in front of more than 15,000 fans.

“A big goal of mine this whole season is to fulfill my role and do the best for my team every day,” Anderson said. “And every day that will look a little different. That's just my role, that it looks different every day. Today it was on the field.”

Anderson dished out 51 total assists and led the Badgers to an impressive .472 kill percentage. The Badgers hit .411 in the game, so the senior was obviously doing something right.

“It's not easy to hear that you're in charge a few hours before the game starts,” Sheffield said. “And we saw their composure and their connection. I mean, we had a pretty good scoring rate throughout the game.”

Zach Schuster

The Badgers showed a familiar development in the first set. A development that feels very much like a trend and that the team will have to fix relatively quickly if it wants to fight for the championship in the impending Big Ten season.

The Badgers fell behind 15-11 early on, but fought back to take a 21-19 lead. Poor passes in the red zone often took Anderson away from the net, leading to subpar offensive opportunities that hitters were unable to capitalize on.

The result was a 25-22 set win for the Golden Eagles and a 2-10 record in decisive sets for the Badgers.

Zach Schuster

Although there was a slight sense of unease in the arena, Anderson and her teammates responded appropriately.

Perhaps more accurately, Anderson and a certain Sarah Franklin responded appropriately.

The reigning National Player of the Year has played like a workwoman so far, averaging 4.2 kills per set on just .222 hitting. She's put a lot of work into putting the ball on the floor, but she definitely hasn't earned a trip to the ESPYs to be nominated for an award alongside Caitlin Clark.

It wasn't the lunch hour work that catapulted Franklin to the top of the sport in 2023, but the matches where Frank the Tank came into his own. You know, 22 kills at .500 in a three-set match. 8 kills in a single set.

In the second set, Frank the Tank was back in full action.

The Badgers posted an acceptable .276 batting average in Set 1, but then Anderson and her hitters, especially Franklin, started scoring. Two kills from Franklin helped the Badgers take an early 8-4 lead and they played the rest of the game from the front, taking a 25-20 victory.

Franklin easily managed nine kills in set 2, in which the Badgers also got three big kills from Julia Orzol and six more from Anna Smrek. They increased their hit rate to .341 in the second frame.

“Sarah makes the game so easy for us and her whole team,” Anderson said. “You saw that all game long, but especially at the end. You can give her the ball and she's going to score a goal, no matter what the ball is.”

The score was tied again (1-1), the momentum in the stadium that Frank the Tank 1.0 had built up was on the Badgers' side, but the third set has been the Badgers' kryptonite so far this season. Louisville, Texas, Stanford, TCU, Baylor – none of them great third sets!

Zach Schuster

In the third set, it was neck and neck until another lineup concocted by Coach Sheffield came out of the lab and started wreaking havoc on an opponent.

It's well-documented that the Badgers have a numbers problem on offense, but they also have a defensive specialist in Gulce Guctekin who has historically played a prominent role in out-of-system bump setting and a midfielder in CC Crawford who could probably play for another program if she really wanted to.

So if the setter is in the front row and Guctekin is in the game, why not pay tribute to hockey and take the setter out to make it 6-0? Very conventional!

Zach Schuster

The Badgers have tried to make it 6-0 in several games this season, but they've been shut out almost every time. On Tuesday night, Guctekin stepped to the service line with the Badgers trailing 14-13, and then a frenzy broke out that probably had Sheffield laughing manically at his lineup cauldron.

Franklin Kill.

Block.

Mistake.

Franklin Kill.

Block.

Mistake.

Franklin Kill.

Franklin Kill.

Franklin Kill.

A 14-13 deficit turned into a 22-14 lead. Perhaps more importantly, the Badgers shrugged off the burden of the third set in impressive fashion.

“I've never been in a game like this where there was such a high percentage of plays where you were just playing with the blocking sub and with DSs or middle blockers taking the second ball,” Sheffield said.

Smrek spoke about the team's run in sets 2 and 3, identifying a key aspect of what makes this group of Badgers special and highlighting one of the aspects of the game that the Badgers absolutely must excel in if they want to be successful this season.

“I think good blocks give the team so much energy,” she said.

Zach Schuster

Of course, a story about the Marquette match would not be complete without returning to Frank the Tank.

Franklin managed another 7 kills in set 3, giving her 21 kills in the first three sets. When taking photos from the floor, you usually follow the mood rather than the stats, and I admit I did a double take when I looked up and saw that Franklin had 21 kills in 3 sets.

Maybe for Franklin it was just another day at the office where the extraordinary seemed ordinary.

“The best is for last” is a tired cliche, but Franklin literally saved her best for last in the 4th movement. We just can't leave the cliche out!

After a kill by Smrek, the Badgers led 13-10 and Franklin scored 10 of the last 12 points for the Badgers to secure the victory in four sets.

Franklin finished the match with a total of 33 kills on 60 shots and only 2 errors, giving her a hit percentage of .517. The 33 kills were a new record in the Badger singles match schedule.

Zach Schuster

In the post-match press conference, Sheffield made fun of the player who had made Franklin's record-breaking night possible.

“Carly knows I'm about to call her out on this because I told her early in the game. I said Smrek needs to set a career high in kills tonight. Feed her, feed her. She's Canadian, so my accent may be a little too thick for her to understand, but I think she probably heard Franklin.”

The crazy thing is, Franklin almost became another Badgers phenom to fall victim to the Sheffield curse mentioned at the beginning of this post. She struggled with back pain so severe that she spent several timeouts doing baseline sprints to prevent her back from spasming.

“I've never seen a player sprint in the middle of a game, but keeping her back loose was something that took all day and all game,” Sheffield said. “She has to put in that performance even though her back was so tight and she was in so much pain. She's a fighter. I mean, that's absolutely one of the best games I've ever seen from a player under those circumstances.”