Nebraska volleyball will head into the season as the top-ranked team in the nation — right where their new head coach believes her squad should be.
The AVCA released its preseason coaches poll on Wednesday and the Huskers received 40 of the 61 first-place votes, including one from Dani Busboom Kelly.
“I’m not surprised,” Busboom Kelly said on Wednesday. “I get a vote, and I voted ourselves No. 1. I think we’re pretty talented, so we’re going to talk about that and talk about what it means to be No. 1, but we’re not going to dwell on that or talk about it more for more than about 10 minutes. But I also don’t want to avoid it, and I don’t think anybody on our team is going to be surprised that we’re preseason No. 1.
“I also don’t think anybody believes that that’s what we’ll be in December just because that’s what we are right now, because they’ve been through it all.”
The Huskers went 33-3 last season and made it to the Final Four, and they returned most of their lineup while adding one of the top recruiting classes in the country. Busboom Kelly has plenty of talent to work with in her first season at the helm for her alma mater. Big Ten coaches also voted Nebraska preseason favorite in the conference, but junior setter Bergen Reilly said the Huskers aren’t putting much stock in what others think — especially with the way the last two seasons have ended.
“It’s a lot of outside noise, and we try and keep that outside of the gym, because when we get in there, it’s just a 17 on the court and it’s our coaches,” Reilly said. “I’ve always heard, ‘Don’t listen to what anybody has to say about you, especially if it’s good.’ You’ve got to just come in and work every single day, and I don’t want it to start to affect us and just think like, ‘Oh, we are the best, we’re going to win.’ We’re not coming in like that.
“We’re coming in with a chip on our shoulder from the last couple years, and we want to finish it off this year. So we’re really not thinking about that at all.”
Reigning national champion Penn State received the other 21 first-place votes. Pittsburgh is No. 3, Busboom Kelly’s former school Louisville starts at No. 4 under her long-time assistant Dan Meske, and Texas rounds out the top five.
Five other Big Ten schools start the season inside the top 25: No. 8 Wisconsin, No. 11 Minnesota, No. 15 Purdue, No. 18 UCLA and No. 21 USC. Oregon (27th) and Washington (33rd) were also among others receiving votes.
The Huskers will also face five preseason ranked teams in nonconference play: No. 3 Pitt, No. 6 Stanford, No. 7 Kentucky, No. 12 Creighton (under new head coach Brian Rosen) and No. 23 Utah. In total, 12 of Nebraska’s 30 regular season matches will be against teams in the preseason top 25, including six matches against top-10 teams.
To prepare for the tough schedule, the Huskers hit the ground running during spring workouts and the start of fall camp. Whereas John Cook preferred to focus on fundamentals and ease the players in, Busboom Kelly had the players go live and compete from the start. Reilly said the different practice plan has been fun, and senior pin hitter Taylor Landfair said the level of competitiveness has been high on a daily basis.
“There are pros and cons to both ways, but we’ve gotten to play pretty much right away, and part of that is because we do have Red-White this weekend already,” Reilly said. “It’s just really competitive every single day in practice. There’s no day that we don’t compete. And like Taylor said, like, it’s been extremely competitive every single day. There’s been no blowout games, really, and teams change and lineups change and every single game is super close, so it’s been really fun to just get to play right away.”
Busboom Kelly has altered the camp schedule to include two public exhibitions, the annual Red-White Scrimmage and a new Alumni Match where the 2025 squad takes on a group of former Husker greats. Whereas the Red-White used to serve as the unofficial close to fall camp, this year’s team will scrimmage in front of a sold-out Devaney Center on Saturday, less than two weeks into camp.
“It definitely does feel a little weird, but fall camp’s staying the same,” Reilly said. “We’re going in and we’re doing a lot of double days. We’re working hard every day, and Dani told us it’s pretty much just going to be like a glorified practice, because we do have the alumni game that’ll be more like a game. We’re just taking it one day at a time. We’re still working through things and getting prepared for season and not necessarily getting prepared for Red-White. This is more just another practice for us.”
Busboom Kelly said she hasn’t decided on a format or team configurations for the Red-White Scrimmage yet. In conjunction with the program’s Fan Day, she wants Saturday to be about fun for both the players and the fans. The Alumni Match the following Saturday is when things will get really serious as the Huskers gear up for the season-opener against No. 3 Pitt on Aug. 22. Based on what she’s seen so far in practice, Busboom Kelly said her thoughts and expectations for this year’s team haven’t changed.
“We’re very talented, super fun group,” Busboom Kelly said. “They really show every day that they, number one, love volleyball; number two, want to win, and that’s every person on the team. It’s really hard to think of a glaring weakness. Of course, we want to get better at certain things, but right now, there’s nothing that’s sticking out that is scary going into the fall.”
Fan Day is set for 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday and is limited to 2,000 fans who claimed tickets. The Red-White Scrimmage is slated for a 2:30 p.m. start with doors opening at 1, and Nebraska Public Media will televise the scrimmage locally.
