No. 1 Nebraska volleyball showed some holiday spirit on Halloween night with a scary good performance, sweeping No. 11 Wisconsin in Madison while dressed in black.
The Huskers (21-0, 11-0 Big Ten) beat the Badgers (15-4, 6-3) 25-22, 25-19, 25-13 at the UW Field House, securing the inaugural Big Ten Discover Challenge title with a perfect 5-0 record in the designated conference matches. Purdue also went 5-0, but the Huskers won the tiebreaker by sweeping every match.
“It was an interesting match to me because I thought we started out a little bit shaky, and I thought Bergen [Reilly] didn’t have her best start,” Coach Dani Busboom Kelly said on the Huskers Radio Network. “Obviously, playing Mimi [Colyer] is really, really tough. We just stayed with what has made us great all year, and stuck with it, and it finally started clicking. So really proud of the defensive effort, and then I thought our offense really turned it on in the middle of the match to finish it out.”
The Huskers improved on their nation-leading season percentage by hitting .349, more than double what Wisconsin had allowed on the season. Reilly finished with 38 assists, eight digs, four blocks and three kills on five attacks. Harper Murray led the way with a match-high 15 kills, eight digs, four blocks and two aces, though she only hit .200
The Huskers set the middle early and often as Andi Jackson finished with 12 kills on .600 hitting and three blocks while Rebekah Allick added seven kills on .538 hitting with six blocks. Neither committed an error. Taylor Landfair made her return to the lineup after tweaking her ankle against Northwestern last weekend and chipped in six kills on .500 hitting.
“She was great, and I just told our team in the locker room, sometimes she doesn’t get much credit, but statistically, just consistency,” Busboom Kelly said of Landfair. “We know we’re going to get and she just rises to the occasion against great teams, so it’s awesome to see.”
Freshman Teraya Sigler didn’t record a kill or an ace but still made a big impact, recording a career- and match-high 14 digs to lead the defensive effort.
“She was so good, and I thought that first rally set the tone,” Busboom Kelly said. “We’ve said it a lot of times, different players have stepped up in the first few points of the game and have maybe done some things they haven’t done yet this year, and to see her just dig Colyer the first rally was huge. She set the tone for our defense.”
Colyer entered Friday’s match averaging 5.2 kills on .317 hitting. The Huskers held her below both figures as she finished with 14 kills on .239 hitting (with seven of those kills coming in the third set with Nebraska firmly in control). As a team, Wisconsin hit .175, well below its average of .305. Laney Choboy added 10 digs and an ace at libero while Olivia Mauch chipped in seven digs.
“I think we had a really good scout, so props to our coaches on that,” Bergen Reilly said on Big ten Network. “But just executing the scout is the next step and it was huge. We had a lot of huge digs and even if it wasn’t pretty, we got it back over and just kind of wore them down, and that’s the goal.”
Nebraska took an early lead in game one and maintained a bit of separation for much of the set. A 3-0 Husker run including an ace from Murray stretched the lead to five at 18-13, but Wisconsin freshman Natalie Wardlow, a Lincoln Southeast graduate, led the Badgers back with a 5-0 run including two aces to tie it. The former Knight finished with all of Wisconsin’s four aces, a season-high for the freshman.
Allick asserted herself from there with three kills and a block assist down the stretch. Her final kill gave the Huskers set point at 24-22 and Murray closed it out with her seventh termination. She hit .333 in the frame.
Nebraska hit .343 and held Wisconsin to .190, totaling 20 digs and four blocks. The Nebraska middles combined for seven kills on 11 errorless swings while the Huskers limited Colyer to four kills on .200 hitting.
The first set saw a couple ties early before the Huskers took over. Nebraska put together an 11-3 run to build a 15-7 advantage as the Badger errors mounted. Wisconsin cleaned up its attack to trim the deficit to four a handful of times, but the Huskers maintained control and traded points down the stretch. Jackson closed it out with a slide kill on Nebraska’s second set-point opportunity.
Murray cooled off in the second set but Landfair picked up the slack with three kills as Nebraska hit .270. The Huskers held the Badgers to .143.
Set three saw the Huskers make another push early, using a 4-1 run including two kills apiece from Murray and Jackson to take a 5-2 lead. After a pair of Badger kills, Murray served a 6-0 run including another ace to extend the gap to seven at 11-4… and the Huskers continued to roll from there. Wisconsin had no answer.
Reilly called her own number on match point to secure the sweep. The Huskers hit a .432 and held Wisconsin to .189, logging 19 more digs and three more blocks. Jackson nearly matched Colyer with six kills while Murray added five.
Nebraska extended its streak of consecutive sets won to 37 including all 33 in Big Ten play. Elsewhere, No. 2 Texas suffered its first set-back of the season against No. 9 Texas A&M, leaving Nebraska as the only undefeated team in the country.
“I think it’s just the work we put in behind the scenes in practice,” Reilly said. “Every single day we’re competing our butts off. We know that our goal isn’t to win 37 sets in a row, it’s to win a national championship. So it’s just not letting ourselves get complacent and really just trusting what we do in practice.”
The Huskers will return home to host Oregon on Sunday afternoon, with first serve set for 1 p.m. on Big Ten Network.
