Last season, Nebraska volleyball had a win against Stanford that indicated the Huskers might be destined for a big year.
After a somewhat light schedule prior to that match — Lipscomb, Long Beach State, among others — the Huskers got tested in a major way, playing the No. 5-ranked Cardinal in California.
The Huskers won two close sets, eventually won in four sets and showed a team playing four freshmen could be on the verge of something good.
The Huskers went on to win 27 consecutive matches to begin the season, won the Big Ten title and reached the national championship match.
That also ended Nebraska’s five-match losing streak in the head-to-head series with Stanford.
This year a win for Nebraska on Wednesday might be even bigger. Stanford is ranked three spots higher than Nebraska at No. 2.
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The 7 p.m. match at the Devaney Sports Center is on Big Ten Network.
Stanford, at 7-0, is off to its best start in 10 years, including wins against two NCAA Final Four teams from last year — Wisconsin and Texas.
Nebraska is 8-1. The Huskers weren’t feeling great about how they were playing while still winning early in the season and then lost against unranked SMU.
The Huskers did elevate their play last week with wins against two Top 20 teams Creighton and Arizona State.
The Huskers have a 30-match home winning streak over three seasons.
In college volleyball, these are blueblood programs — Stanford ranks No. 1 for NCAA titles with nine and Nebraska ranks third with five.
And part of the excitement for the sport during the four weeks of nonconference play is that the top programs schedule matches against each other.
Nebraska-Stanford is part of an impressive slate of matches on Wednesday. Others are top-ranked Pittsburgh vs. No. 3 Penn State; No. 4 Louisville vs. No. 11 Kentucky and No. 8 Texas vs. No. 20 Baylor.
But it’s not certain if Nebraska and Stanford will play again next season. This is the final year of a four-year scheduling agreement that Nebraska coach John Cook helped set up that also included Kentucky and Louisville.
Cook would love to play Stanford next year, but college sports are changing and that could impact the series. Nebraska will already be making a West Coast trip every year now for Big Ten play. Stanford will have more long trips playing in the ACC. Athletic Directors may tell coaches to cut back on their nonconference travel costs.
“I’m going to talk to (Stanford coach Kevin Hambly) about it,” Cook said. “We have to continue to rethink scheduling, and who knows what the conferences are going to do. Long-term commitments are going to be out and it’s just going to be year-to-year.”
Outside hitter Elia Rubin leads Stanford with an average of 4.23 kills per set on .304 hitting. Sami Francis, a 6-foot-6 middle blocker, averages 2.3 kills per set with an impressive .456 hitting percentage.
Senior setter Kami Miner is a two-time first-team All-American and helps the offense go at a high level.
How will you potentially see how good Miner is? Watch closely to see if sets result in her hitters getting high-percentage hitting attempts, like going against just one blocker.
“She’s a great athlete, so she’ll be fun to watch because she does everything really well,” Cook said. “She probably could hit for them if they wanted her to. She’s just a great athlete playing the game. They run a pretty fast offense, so she’ll be flying around.”
Nebraska may have to play one of its best matches of the year in order to win.
Setter Bergen Reilly feels like Nebraska’s teamwork has improved since the loss against SMU.
“We’ve just gelled as a team every single game since then and I think that it’s gotten better and better and we’ve gone up and up,” Reilly said. “That’s exactly what we wanted from that. We wanted SMU to be a turning point in our season, and I think so far it has been.”
Reach the writer at 402-473-7435 or bwagner@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSSportsWagner.
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Publish date : 2024-09-17 13:30:00
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