More than 10,000 fans showed up at Pinnacle Bank Arena to watch No. 1 Nebraska volleyball’s annual Red-White Scrimmage on Sunday as the Red team topped the White 3-1.
Coach Dani Busboom Kelly said she’s mixed up her lineups throughout the preseason rather than splitting into an A side and a B side, and she followed that trend for the scrimmage with veterans and newcomers split up between the two sides and roster tweaks taking place halfway through.
The combined hitting percentage for the two teams was .074, with Red hitting .121 and White .023 as defense carried the day.
“I do think Red-Whites are hard because when you look at the stats, you can be disappointed in one thing, but it’s probably because of something else you’re doing well, so it does get tough to evaluate …” Busboom Kelly said. “I hope it’s very hard to get a kill in our gym, and I hope it’s more because of that and not because we can’t get kills. I do think the defense is a little bit ahead of the offense right now.”
Blocking played a big part in the low hitting percentages as the teams combined for 29 stuffs — 17 for the Red and 12 for the White. Busboom Kelly said the improvement from the young middle blockers — sophomores Manaia Ogbechie and Kenna Cogill and freshman Keoni Williams — showed prominently in that stat.
“I think our middles are just so much improved from last year,” Busboom Kelly said. “Manaia and Kenna, people forget they got here in July, so they really had very little time with the team before we started season, and so they’ve had a whole year and a half, and Ke’s a very talented blocker; she’s in the right spot a lot. The middles are just touching everything, which makes it very difficult because we’ve always had an awesome back row. So now the middles are being more effective, and the back row is scooping up the ones that get by them.”
On Sunday, Ogbechie was the middle who popped most often at the net as the 6-foot-3 sophomore finished with 13 block assists — a number that shocked Ogbechie herself when she heard it during the post-scrimmage press conference.
“We always knew she was going to be a great blocker,” Busboom Kelly said. “For her, it’s just some little technical things that she’s been working really hard on and really focused on, and I haven’t even seen it translate as much as it did today in practice, so that’s another awesome sign for us that we’re doing things at a high level when the pressure is a little bit higher.”
Bergen Reilly, who set for the Red squad all afternoon, was pleased with the team’s performance despite the low hitting percentages.
“I thought we played really well,” Reilly said. “We know it’s really hard to kill balls in our gym, and especially when we’ve been practicing together for seven months, everyone kind of knows each other’s tendencies. I think we knew no team was going to be hitting .300 today, and if they were, I think that’s more of a problem than if a team’s hitting what they were.
“I think we’re all really proud of just the strides we made, and we really put to use some things we’ve been working on in practice, and maybe it didn’t go our way today, but we were going for it, and that’s a great first step for us.”
The players and coaches put a major emphasis on more aggressive and impactful serving during the offseason, and the work showed on Sunday with 13 aces — seven for White and six for Red — to go with 22 errors. Andi Jackson and Laney Choboy led the way with two aces apiece while nine others Huskers served one each.
“It was awesome to see it show up today,” Busboom Kelly said. “I thought we served really tough. Of course, we missed a few, but the misses weren’t bad. Sometimes in the Red-White game, you have some pretty horrible misses, and I can only remember one or two that barely hit the net, or one that was out by a lot. So, serving is good, and we’ve been focusing on it. It’s same thing, you think it’s getting better in practice, but if you can’t do it in front of a crowd in a game-like atmosphere, it doesn’t really matter. So it’s nice to see some of that translated to a game setting.”
Virginia Adriano (hitting .231) and Teraya Sigler (.031) led everyone with 11 kills apiece. Skyler Pierce added 10 kills on .026 hitting while Ryan Hunter chipped in nine on .044. Choboy’s 16 digs led a group of five Huskers in double figures while Olivia Mauch wasn’t far behind with 14.
Reilly finished with 37 assists, 13 digs, five blocks, three kills and one ace while Campbell Flynn totaled 27 assists, 12 digs and an ace.
Director of Volleyball Player Performance and Development Sean Smith presents sophomore Teraya Sigler with Nebraska volleyball’s Lifter of the Year award during the Red-White Scrimmage. Photo by John S. Peterson.
Teammates have raved about the improvement Sigler has made during the offseason, and they backed that up by voting her the program’s Lifter of the Year, an award new strength coach Sean Smith presented to her between the first and second sets.
“The best thing about Lifter of the Year is that it’s voted on by the team, not picked by a strength coach, so it’s them recognizing somebody’s work,” Busboom Kelly said. “I think it’s pretty awesome to be recognized by your teammates as working really hard and making changes and not taking the easy way out … You can see that her jump’s improved, she’s healthy, she’s physical, she not only works to lift hard, she also is into her nutrition and sleep and doing yoga and doing things that will keep her healthy.”
For the first two sets, the Red team consisted of Reilly at setter, Harper Murray and Pierce at outside hitter, Ogbechie and Williams at middle blocker, Adriano at opposite hitter and Choboy at libero. That left Flynn at setter; Sigler, Jayden Robinson and Gabby DiVita at outside hitter; Jackson and Kenna Cogill at middle blocker; Ryan Hunter on the right side; Mauch at libero and Keri Leimbach at defensive specialist for the White.
For the last two sets, the Red team featured Reilly, Pierce, Robinson, DiVita, Jackson, Ogbechie, Hunter and Mauch while the White included Flynn, Murray, Sigler, Cogill, Williams, Adriano, Choboy at libero and Leimbach.
“We push each other every day in practice, and we know that some of our practices might be harder than games,” Reilly said of the competition. “So really just priding ourselves on coming in every day and pushing each other. We know there’s been an emphasis on serving, so that means our passers are going to have to get better, and there’s been an emphasis on blocking, so our attackers are going to have to get better at finding kills.
“So we’ve really just been priding ourselves on that and going in every day and really just pushing the other person, pushing the other people in your position group, or pushing a different position group, whatever it is. Using ourselves to get better, and I think that we’ve done a great job of that so far. But with growth in one area is going to have to come growth in another area because our gym is so tough.”
The ongoing renovations at the Devaney Center sent the Huskers to Pinnacle Bank Arena for the scrimmage, and a crowd of 10,753 fans showed up.
“We love playing in PBA, and when you walk in today, the vibe is just a little bit different, and people are excited,” Busboom Kelly said. “When you can have [10,753], that’d be a sold out Devaney, new Devaney even, so I thought it was awesome, and I thought the crowd was engaged. It’s funny because they don’t know, really, who to cheer for, but I just felt like they were really paying attention. Sometimes in Red-Whites you can hear chatters and people just conversing, and here it felt like they were really watching us play.”
The Huskers won’t take the court in front of fans in Lincoln again until the Ameritas Players Challenge starting on Sept. 10, the unofficial opening for the renovated John Cook Arena. The Huskers will play their first five matches plus the exhibition Spikes Under the Lights tournament away from home.
“We have another week of practice, and we start school, so that changes our schedule, and then we go to Dallas, and then we’ll have a quick turnaround from Dallas to playing [UNLV and] Texas,” Busboom Kelly said. “We’ll use those exhibition games to iron a few things out, and hopefully … we play two down there in Dallas, and that’ll be a great tune-up before we have a game that really counts.”
First Set
Choboy served a 5-0 run early to put the Red team ahead, but the White later rallied to tie it at 15-all with a 4-0 run including back-to-back aces from Jackson. Red surged back ahead 20-15, but White responded with a 7-1 run to take the lead at 22-21.
Red used a 3-0 run to jump back in front 24-22, and White saved three set points, but Reilly found the floor with a dump and the White team hit wide for a 27-25 Red victory.
Adriano led everyone with four kills on .333 hitting as Red out-hit the White .158 to .105.
Second Set
Choboy served another extended run, this time 6-0, to put Red ahead 6-2 early in game two. The block came alive for the Red team with five stuffs in the first 12 rallies (and Ogbechie in on all of them) and that squad built a 12-5 lead at one point.
White rallied to tie it up four times before taking the lead at 18-17, but Red fired back with a 4-0 run then maintained the advantage the rest of the way, closing the set on a 3-0 run for a 25-21 win.
The Red team had more blocks (six) than the White had kills (five) as Red out-hit White .094 to minus-.179.
Third Set
The lineups changed for set three, but Red completed the sweep with the best offensive set for either side all afternoon.
Red used a 3-0 run to build a 12-8 lead and a 4-0 run to extend it to 18-12, drawing both White timeouts in the process. The lead peaked at 21-14 on a double block from Jackson and Pierce.
White used a 3-0 run to trim the deficit to four, but Red closed it out soon after with Hunter terminated on set point for a 25-19 win.
The second year opposite hitter finished with five kills on seven swings in the set to lead the way as Red hit .312 with four more blocks and held White to minus-.038.
Fourth Set
The White team managed to avoid a clean sweep by taking control midway through the extra set, using a 9-2 run to build a 16-10 lead. Jackson and Hunter sparked a 3-0 spurt with a kill and a block assist apiece, but that’s as close as the Red got the rest of the way as White cruised to a 25-17 win. Choboy served an ace on the final point.
Sigler led the way with four kills and five digs as White out-hit Red .147 to minus-.051. Adriano added three kills in five errorless swings.
