Nebraska 3, Washington 0: 25-14, 25-18, 25-16
Nebraska volleyball returned to the Devaney Center on Friday night, after a weekend out east, to take on the Washington Huskies. This is their 1st meeting in Lincoln as B1G opponents. The Huskers proved to be the better team tonight as they have pretty much all season long.
Skyler Pierce was out tonight as she entered the arena in a boot earlier today. No one really knows what is going on with her whether it is just preventive or something is actually wrong.
DBK didn’t mention this injury, or any others, during the presser on Tuesday. I bet she will receive questions about this after the match.
The Huskers debuted their new taraflex court tonight which is one of my favorites. It definitely competes with the black floor for coolest design. We didn’t know if we would see this tonight since they hadn’t practiced on it yet, but later in the week they got some time on it and decided to play with it.
The fans attending Bob Devaney Center tonight had a job of their own. They had to wear the color that was assigned to their section so we could have a cool stripe out going that looked kind of like a checkerboard.
You could tell that some people didn’t get the memo though as some people stuck out like a sore thumb. It could also be that a lot of the older Husker fans don’t believe in wearing anything but red. That makes planning special games fun sometimes. I guess we’ll see what happens during football’s black out against USC next month.
The Huskers came out strong to start the match, particularly Rebekah Allick as she went 3 for 3 on her first kills of the night. The Huskers didn’t come out flat either. This has been something that has been changing lately. At the start of the season we saw a lot of flat starts, but now they they just come out and never take their foot off the pedal.
They went on a 6-0 scoring run to make the score 13-4 in the 1st set before Washington started a mini run of their own to try and get back into the set. They scored 3 in a row to come within 7 at 17-10 and any kind of momentum like that can help a team come back.
Andi Jackson had an answer for this though as she had a big kill to end their run and put the Huskers back up 8. Nebraska continued to crush the hopes of a Huskies comeback as they went back up 10 again, at 22-12, after a textbook block by Allick and Taylor Landfair.
Nebraska got the 1st set win pretty easily as they won by 11 points at 25-14. Virginia Adriano led all Husker hitters with kills. Allick and Bergen Reilly both were hitting 1.000% after the 1st set. Reilly had 2 setter dumps. The Huskers were hitting an impressive .500% and they kept the Huskies to only hitting .161% in that set.
Washington kept the 2nd set way closer as they were going point for point at he beginning of the set. The Huskers started making some more errors at this point than they did in the 1st.
There 2 long rallies that Washington ended up on the right side of both times that helped bring the Huskies within 1 at 12-11. The 2nd long rally ended with an error by Adriano hitting the antenna.
The Huskers were not hitting well to start the 2nd as they were below .200% for much of the set. Washington was the same way. Nebraska finally got it together though and started to make better hitting decisions and get above .250%.
The Huskies are 3 for 3 on the extended rallies as they had a huge kill late in the set to try and grab some more momentum. This didn’t help though as the Huskers won the next few points to close out the set and send it to the 3rd.
Even though the Huskers didn’t look as strong, hitting wise, they still managed to keep the Huskies to hitting .146% while rebounding to finished at .275% themselves. Harper Murray and Virginia Adriano both had 8 kills at the end of the set while Reilly was still sitting perfect at 1.000%. Andi Jackson was the next highest, with multiple kills, at .600%.
Set 3 looked a lot like set 2 as Washington hung around early in the set with the Huskers. Olivia Mauch started the set out with 2 aces that were preceded by a Rebekah Allick kill to take the early 3-0 lead.
Washington stayed in the match by highlighting Laney Choboy’s struggles at serve receive and, sometimes, passing as it seems she was targeted for a couple rallies.
Just like the 2nd, the Huskers started to pull away in the 3rd set as they went up 18-13 with Andi Jackson leading the way with 10 kills. The Huskies still had some fight left though.
After a big Harper Murray swing and a Virginia Adriano swing, that bounced back to hit a Husky, the Huskers were the 1st team to reach 20. Washington took a a timeout following Taylor Landfair killing a ball to make the score 21-14.
The Huskies kept fighting until the end, but the Huskers pulled off the sweep and remain undefeated in B1G play, and for the season.
Harper Murray had a really good night as she had 12 kills and hit .407% on the night after a few matches that showed lower numbers for her. Andi Jackson was right behind her with 10 kills, hitting .562%. Virginia Adriano had 9 and Allick and Landfair both had 7.
The Huskers it .307% tonight while holding the Huskies to only hitting .147% which follows their season trend of holding opponents to a low hitting percentage.
On top of Allick’s 7 kills, she also had 8 blocks for strong night on both sides of the ball. Landfair was right behind Allick with 4 blocks of her own.
The Huskers will go back on the road for a Sunday match against #12 Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana. This top 15 math will only be available on B1G+. You either need a subscription or you can pay $5.99 to watch the match on what I guess is B1G+ pay-per-view. The match will begin at 12:00pm CT.
