Nebraska 3
-DePaul 0: 25-19, 25-13, 25-15The Huskers started their weekend off playing a match in Wintrust Center against the DePaul Blue Demons. I might’ve called them the Blue Devils in my previous article… don’t blame me, it’s been a long week ok.
Andi Jackson was not available for tonight’s match after rolling her ankle in the 3rd set of the South Dakota State match on Wednesday night. DBK said it was more about getting her rested and not risking anything than her being severely injured. She should
return for Sunday’s match barring anything big happening. Since Jackson was out, Kenna Cogill got her first career start as a Husker.
While the SDSU match was mainly Jackrabbit blue, the match here in Chicago was very red. During the first few points of the match, someone in the crowd was yelling “Go Big Red” and then we proceeded to give up 2 points, so that had to be nipped in the bud because it wasn’t working.
Tonights match filled with errors. Errors everywhere. Serving, hitting, you name it. It started to get cleaned up as the match went on, but that many errors against a top-ranked team would not go well for the Huskers.
The first set was definitely the hardest to watch because of errors. Our defense also looked very shaky as well to start. They just had a slow start all around, but eventually picked it up and won the 2nd set by 12 points and the 3rd set by 10 points.
If you want to know how lackluster our defense was in the 1st, just look at the hitting stats. The Huskers hit .607% while DePaul hit .308%. Opponents never really hit this high against this team so the defense needed to turn things around which they clearly did seeing as DePaul didn’t hit above .100% in the other sets.
Campbell Flynn was the last Husker to make her debut this season. Flynn came in near the end of the 1st set along with Ryan Hunter to take over for Bergen Reilly and Virginia Adriano. Reilly and Adriano were being rested like Harper Murray was on Wednesday night.
Teraya Sigler had a big night leading the team in kills through the 2nd set even though she only played the 1st set of this match. She ended the match with 8 kills, hitting .800% on 10 attempts. Insane stat for an OH.
It was another night of the bench clearing as DBK got almost everyone in the match to get some game time under their belts. Jayden Robinson was the only Husker not to enter the match at some point tonight. This may be one of the last times we see the bench clear like this, but with our not-so-hard non-conference schedule, we could see this again.
Harper Murray looked more like herself again tonight as she had 11 kills, hitting .292% on the night. Ryan Hunter rounds out the top 3 in kills with 5 of her own, hitting .571%.
Kenna Cogill looked like a seasoned pro on defense finishing with 7 blocks tonight leading the team. The other starting middle, Manaia Ogbechie, had 2 blocks in the 2 sets she played.
Nebraska’s offense stayed pretty consistent throughout the match hitting at a high clip in every set. DePaul’s was the opposite. They started off hot in the 1st set, then their offense totally dropped off in the last 2 hitting negative and then .000%. They finished the match hitting .060%.
The Huskers’ next match is the much anticipated Wrigley Field match where they will debut their baseball inspired jerseys.
The match will begin at 8:00pm CST on Sunday night and will be televised on Fox.
