MADISON – Wisconsin outside hitter Mimi Colyer has been quite the headache for opposing coaches in 2025.
Colyer, who has one season of eligibility after transferring from Oregon, is third in the country and second in the Big Ten with 5.19 kills per set, as of Oct. 1. That’s all while the 2024 second-team All-American has hit a career-high .344 through the first 10 matches of the 2025 season. She has been a vital part of the Badgers’ current stretch of eight consecutive matches won and 24 of the last 25 sets won.
Here are two opposing coaches’ thoughts on Colyer’s skill set following their recent three-set losses this season to the Badgers:
Marquette coach Tom Mendoza
When Wisconsin visited Marquette at Fiserv Forum, Colyer collected 13 kills and had a .550 hitting percentage. It was Colyer’s fourth consecutive match at the time hitting above .500.
MU coach Tom Mendoza summed it up well after the match when he said Colyer is a “problem.”
“She can move the ball around,” Mendoza said in the post-match news conference. “Her shot chart is a pretty good distribution. It looks like a fan. It’s not like, ‘OK, she gets kills here and here.’ She can get kills in a pretty large range, both for power and against a variety of blocks, front row, back row.”
She also had six digs without any reception errors, one block and two service aces against the Mendoza-coached Golden Eagles (although she also had two service errors).
“Whether it’s serve, serve-receive, attacking out of the front row, attacking out of the back row, you want to just impact the game as much as you can,” Mendoza said. “And I think she’s doing a good job of that, and they’re using her well.”
It is not just a case either of “if you just take this away, we can slow her down.”
“You got to have a combination of taking something away and then shifting some defenders,” Mendoza said. “So trying to slow her down becomes a little complicated, and then you start to lose track of some focus on some other players. … Good players open up other players as well, and so it’s a multiplying effect.”
Iowa coach Jim Barnes
Iowa’s Jim Barnes was already familiar with Colyer’s multi-faceted skill set from her time at Oregon. She had 16 kills in the Ducks’ four-set win over Barnes and the Hawkeyes in 2024.
When Colyer returned to Iowa on Sept. 28, this time in a Wisconsin uniform, Barnes said she “was still the same killer I saw last year” but with more talent around her.
“She’s one of the most physical players in the country,” Barnes said in a phone call with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Besides having all the physical talent, what makes her so special is her mentality. She’s super steady and fierce. And she’s reliable in the front row, back row. She’s certainly just a killer.”
Colyer had 17 kills in this year’s trip to Xtream Arena – more than Iowa’s top two players combined – while hitting .343. She also had three blocks and five digs as head coach Kelly Sheffield claimed his 600th win.
“The tough part is when we were serving them tough, we broke down their serve-receive some, it still didn’t matter much,” Barnes said. “Because, out of system, she can go up and still put the ball away. She’s one of those players that every team either has or wish they had.”
Her experience – with 368 sets played in three years at Oregon before taking on the starring role in Madison this year – showed as she helped the Badgers pick apart a much-improved Iowa team.
“She’s been developed all those years at Oregon and is well-coached, and she’s had a million reps,” Barnes said. “So you can tell it’s second nature to her when she’s playing the game. Nothing really looks surprising to her. You love that as coaches – to have players who are seniors and respond really well in all situations.”
With Colyer taking the role that 2023 AVCA national player of the year Sarah Franklin had last year, Barnes has seen his Big Ten neighbor to the northeast go from having one of the best players in the country to another player who also is one of the best.
Barnes, who will face Colyer again Nov. 23, when the Hawkeyes travel to the UW Field House, anticipates UW’s future opponents will have to put pressure on her with their serving.
“Out of her entire game, the serve-receive portion is where she struggles the most,” Barnes said. “The reason she can deal with it is because she can hit it, she passes it off, she can still put it away. … But she’s tough. I would put my money on her.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What makes Wisconsin outside hitter Mimi Colyer so hard to stop? Two opposing coaches weigh in
Reporting by John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
