Nebraska 3-North Carolina 1: 25-14, 20-25, 25-21, 25-10
On the opening night of the Ameritas Players Challenge, the Huskers hosted the North Carolina Tar Heels first. Another ranked team to test them before B1G play starts. While yes they did rise to the occasion, there were still moments of “what is going on” that are lingering from the Georgia Tech and Creighton matches.
A couple bright spots from the match tonight were our serving game and our defense. The Huskers had a very impressive number of
aces tonight with 13. 6 of those came in the 1st set alone. The defense also had some very impressive moments in the 2nd that led to some Husker points.
Manaia Ogbechie was back in the lineup tonight after missing the Creighton match with an illness. While Kenna Cogill did an amazing job, and I’d love to see her play more, Ogbechie is a crucial part of both the offense and defense. She had, what she would probably consider, an off night though.
The Huskers dropped their 2nd set of the year in the 2nd set of this match. They were leading the entire way, but the Tar Heels stayed on their heels until they just took control and didn’t let up. A couple errors by Nebraska later, after UNC hit 20 points, and North Carolina tied the match at 1-1.
I’m going to be honest when I say watching the 2nd and 3rd sets was tough. The team just looked flat, slow, lifeless. They just didn’t know how to respond to the Tar Heels coming alive and giving them everything they had.
DBK decided to try and provide a spark for the team, halfway through the 3rd, by subbing Ryan Hunter into the match for Virginia Adriano. Hunter came rolling out of the gates with 2 kills on 3 attempts and only 1 error.
Bringing Hunter in and taking a timeout mid 3rd set really proved to help the Huskers and give them extra energy to pull out the set 3 win and go ahead in the match 2-1. Maybe this means we could Hunter more in the future, but DBK is not really known to mess with her starters, just the lineup mid-match.
The Huskers looked more like themselves in the third set, starting the set out 9-1 and making North Carolina take both timeouts 1o points into the set. They also had no challenges left using their last one a point into the set.
The Huskers closed the match out in 4 sets tonight and had 3 players that absolutely stood out. After a slow start, Harper Murray really picked it up and had 12 kills, hitting .346%. Andi Jackson also looked powerful, like usual, with 10 kills, hitting .571%.
The real star of the match tonight had to be Ryan Hunter. She came into the match when called upon and really gave everything she had. You could tell she wanted that spot and will hope DBK looks at her as a potential starter. Hunter had 6 kills on 7 attempts, hitting .714%.
Teraya Sigler, Manaia Ogbechie, and Virginia Adriano all had ok nights with stats that didn’t really hit where they have been lately. They had 7, 7, and 4 kills, respectively.
Nebraska will close their weekend on Sunday afternoon when they host FGCU as they play their first match ever against each other. The match will begin at 12:00pm CST and will be available to stream on B1G+.
