No. 1 Nebraska volleyball offset its least efficient offensive attack of the season with its best defensive effort to sweep No. 20 Creighton at Pinnacle Bank Arena Wednesday.
A new home indoor record of 15,405 fans — very few of them in blue — packed the Vault for the 2026 edition of the annual I-80 Rivalry as the Huskers won 25-13, 25-15, 25-19 to improve to 8-0.
“I think we have a lot of room to grow,” Coach Dani Busboom Kelly said. “That was not a pretty volleyball match. We can be happy, that’s a great win for us, obviously a top-20 team, an in-state rival, but we’ve got to continue to be hungry, and we’ve got to want more from ourselves …
A crowd of 15,405 packed Pinnacle Bank Arena to watch No. 1 Nebraska and No. 20 Creighton. Photo by John S. Peterson.
“It’s definitely exciting as a coach to know that you can play at a high level, and what’s also exciting is one part of our game might be great, one might not be great, but we can still win. Like tonight, our defense was great, our offense wasn’t that great throughout the entire match, but you didn’t notice it because our defense was playing so well.”
Nebraska hit a season-low .202 with a season-high 21 attack errors. However, they held the Bluejays (5-5) to minus-.033, the first time the Bluejays have hit negative since the 2002 meeting with the Huskers, a sweep in Lincoln in which Nebraska hit minus-.068. This year’s Huskers out-dug the Bluejays 47 to 21 and served five aces while surrendering just one.
“We served really tough,” Busboom Kelly said. “I thought we changed depths really well; you saw us get some aces short. That certainly helps the defense, and then our back court was really good. I thought we picked up the junk. We talked about that, just that they’re going to get some kills, but if we can take care of the tips and junk then we’ll be in a great spot. We executed that part of our defensive plan.”
Creighton managed just 17 kills — the same number as Nebraska’s two middles recorded on their own.
“They’ve got some pretty electric players, and I thought hats off to our defense,” Busboom Kelly said. “We did a good job of containing them, and this was the first game I really felt like we had time and information to scout, and we kind of preached that to our team, like we’ve got to really like be on the scout, and we did a great job of that.”
While the Huskers had plenty of time to prepare, they had to make a last-minute adjustment as the reigning Big Ten Player of the Week, Manaia Ogbechie, missed the match with an illness. Kenna Cogill made her second start of the season opposite Andi Jackson and made the most of it despite learning about the opportunity in the locker room right before the match. Cogill finished with eight kills on 11 errorless swings (.727 hitting) and two blocks while Jackson tallied a match-high nine kills on .571 hitting and six blocks (one solo).
“I said it earlier in the year, we have to have the best four middles as a group, the best middle group, in the country, and I thought tonight was a good example of that,” Busboom Kelly said. “Kenna works hard, comes in every day, does her job, waits her turn, and she got rewarded with the way she played. The most impressive thing about her was not her hitting percentage, it was her composure, the way she played. She played like a senior, and she acted like one, which is even more impressive.”
Bergen Reilly recorded her second straight double-double with 33 assists, 11 digs and three blocks. Olivia Mauch and Teraya Sigler matched her with 11 digs apiece for the team Creighton coach Brian Rosen has No.1 on his AVCA ballot.
“I’m a poll voter; I’ve voted Nebraska No. 1 in every poll that I’ve had,” Rosen said. “I think they’re the best team in the country … I just think the coaching staff of Nebraska, they’re just very disciplined, in the right spots a lot of the time and made some good decisions when they committed [blocking-wise].”
First Set
The Huskers made quick work of the Bluejays in the first set, book-ending the frame with kills from Virginia Adriano. Nebraska used a 6-1 run to double up the Bluejays midway through the set at 14-7 and continued to extend the lead the rest of the way.
Kenna Cogill (8) throws up a block against Creighton’s Ashlyn Paymal (22). Photo by John S. Peterson.
Nebraska dominated the serve and pass game, recording an 85.7% sideout rate compared to Creighton’s 45.8%. The Huskers hit .444 and held the Bluejay to minus-.065, with six kills and eight errors.
Cogill went 4-for-4 on her swings, setting the tone and tying Harper Murray for match-high honors in kills through one game.
“I think Kenna did amazing,” Jackson said. “I just really want to give her kudos because what she did was really hard, learning that you’re playing right before the match, not a whole lot of time to mentally prepare. But we just talked about it in the locker room, Kenna shows up every day at practice ready to go. She’s always been a huge part of the success on this team; she’s pushing us every single day in practice, and I think that really translated today on the court.
“Just her attitude that she shows up with every day, and the effort that she puts in every single day, it was really shown today, so we’re really proud of her. It’s a really hard thing that she did, and I don’t think people really understand that unless they play sports.”
Omaha Westside product Ashlyn Paymal led the Bluejays with three kills on six errorless swings while the rest of the team managed just a 3-8-25 attacking line. Paymal went on to finish with a team-high five kills.
Second Set
Creighton upped its pressure in the second set, which featured nine ties and four lead changes before the media timeout. The Huskers had eight attack errors before the break after just three miscues in the first, and both sides hit in the negative late into the set.
“We just started hitting it out of bounds,” Busboom Kelly said. “We had like four errors in a row out of bounds, so I thought just poor decisions on our side.”
However, Mauch provided the spark Nebraska needed from the service line, notching an ace during a 5-0 run to create the first separation of the set, and the gap only expanded from there. Nebraska closed the game on a 13-3 run to take a 2-0 match lead.
Sigler and Murray closed the set out late with a pair of kills to put Nebraska back in the positive at .061. The Husker serve and defense carried the load, holding Creighton to .000 hitting and just five kills. The Bluejays tacked on four aces, including two by Murray, with only two errors while Creighton misfired four times from the end line.
Third Set
Nebraska’s defensive dominance continued into the third set.
After taking a 3-5 lead early in set two, the Huskers got stuck in a rotation as the Bluejays scored four straight. During the run, Laney Choboy collided with Murray and was slow to get up, clutching at her back in apparent pain. Busboom Kelly chose to get her out of the match with a double substitution, sending in Campbell Flynn and Ryan Hunter.
Jackson finally earned the sideout with a kill, then Murray followed with an ace to put the Huskers back in front 8-7.
Creighton tied it up at 8-8, but Nebraska responded with a 5-1 run to take the lead for good. The Huskers stretched it out further with a 4-0 run featuring Mauch at the service line and two kills apiece from Murray and Adriano for a 17-11 lead.
Virginia Adriano swings over Creighton blockers Trinity Shadd-Ceres (0) and Eloise Brandewie (10). Photo by John S. Peterson.
The Bluejays pulled within three a couple of times but could draw no closer as Nebraska cruised to the sweep. The spot starter, Cogill, converted match point on a quick set from Reilly to cap a new career high in her first match at Pinnacle Bank Arena after watching last year’s AVCA First Serve from the bench.
“It was just so exciting, because obviously last year I redshirted and I didn’t play,” Cogill said. “I remember looking around and I was like, ‘OK, one day I’m going to go out and I’m going to play here and it’s going to be amazing.’ Thinking back on that today, it was just super cool.”
Choboy did not return to the match, although she remained standing with the bench. Busboom Kelly said afterward that the senior is fine and that she wanted to experiment with a 6-2 anyway, so she made the sub. Busboom Kelly went back to the 5-1 after Flynn and Hunter rotated back out and let Adriano play all the way around. The 6-foot-5 Italian led the Huskers with five kills in the set, including one out of the back row.
“She didn’t get that many opportunities, but she got one and she killed it, so that was fun,” Busboom Kelly said of Adriano’s back-row play. “Virginia has an awesome back row attack; it’s just how do you get Laney Choboy and Liv in the game as much as possible? And so you’ve got to kind of give up something somewhere.”
Nebraska hit .154 and held Creighton in the negative again at minus-.032. The Huskers out-dug Creighton 17-6 and notched 10 more kills.
Up Next
Nebraska will get Thursday off before returning to the Devaney Center to host the annual Ameritas Players Challenge. Busboom Kelly said she hopes that Ogbechie will be back from her illness for the weekend.
The Cornhuskers will open tournament play against No. 25 North Carolina (4-2) on Friday.
The Tar Heels won their first four matches of the season against mid-major competition before falling twice last week, to No. 4 Kentucky (3-0) and Vanderbilt (3-1). Outside hitters Safi Hampton (3.1 kills per set on .205 hitting) and Bridget Malone (2.95 kills per set on .242 hitting) lead the attack while 6-foot-3 opposite hitter Chelsea Thorpe adds 2.62 kills per set on .330 hitting. Coach Mike Schall has been rotating his three setters while playing a 6-2.
North Carolina has a Nebraska native on its roster in freshman Addison West, a Skutt Catholic graduate who has five kills on seven swings in three sets this season.
First serve is set for 7 p.m. CT on Big Ten Network.
