After No. 1 Nebraska volleyball pulled off a reverse sweep against another top-10 team in Kentucky, Coach Dani Busboom Kelly had a simple question for her team: are you relieved, or are you excited?
Playing for Nebraska carries plenty of pressure, and the unanimous No. 1 ranking only heightens expectations. To combat that, Busboom Kelly is stressing the important of enjoying every step of the way.
“She’s like, ‘I don’t want it to be a relief that we win; it should be super exciting that we just had a huge win or a reverse sweep against a really great team,’” said Bergen Reilly, recounting her coach’s postgame speech. “So it’s little things here and there that she, whether it’s pregame or in the between the second and third set talk, she’s always just like, ‘Take it all in, this is a cool atmosphere, we have a really great crowd in front of us, and we also have a really great team,’ and just getting to enjoy all those little moments that we might forget about in the heat of a game.”
Busboom Kelly doesn’t want to see her players exhale after a big win, she wants to hear them exclaim.
“It’s a long season, and if you’re feeling relieved after every game, it takes a lot of the joy out of it and the fun,” Busboom Kelly said. “I want our team to be playing free and enjoying every minute, and whether it’s a big opponent or a small opponent, that we are taking it for what it is, and it’s like the most important thing in this program is the thing we’re doing right now.”
Busboom Kelly said she felt that pendulum swing too far towards relief at the tail end of her Louisville tenure, and she doesn’t want to see that happen again in Lincoln.
“It was just like this feel of relief instead of excitement,” Busboom Kelly said. “We’d always built our program on joy and enjoying the moment, enjoying the journey, all the cliche things that coaches say, but we weren’t actually living up to that and the opposite. So to feel that so early in the season, I was like, well, I don’t want to go through the next 25 games feeling relieved. I want to be fired up for these wins, and it’s a big deal to win. Not everybody gets to win, and it’s hard to win, so hard to win, so want them to understand that too.”
Hard as it may be, the Huskers have done plenty of winning so far with a 6-0 start including three top-10 wins. The area of the game that was most responsible for Nebraska needing five sets to beat Kentucky was passing. Busboom Kelly said the Huskers have been solid in serve receive, but she still sees plenty of room for improvement.
“We want to be considered one of the best passing teams in the country, but we’ve also faced some really tough servers compared to a lot of teams, when Pitt and Kentucky had two of the best top-spin servers in the country,” Busboom Kelly said. “So I think some of those numbers are skewed a little bit by aces, where hopefully we don’t give up four or five aces against the same server too often this year, but that was something we’re going to continue to get better at.”
The Huskers will get a chance to continue polishing their passing this weekend as they host the Husker Invitational, welcoming No. 22 Utah, Drake and Grand Canyon to Lincoln. The Huskers and Bulldogs will both face the Utes and Lopes in the two-day event at the Devaney Center.
Grand Canyon and Drake will open the tournament with a 2:30 p.m. start on Friday with the Huskers and Utes to follow at 6 p.m. Fans attending the second match can gain entry to the first with their ticket, though they will not be able to exit and reenter the facility between matches.
Utah is 5-1 with a loss to No. 8 Texas A&M, hitting .280 and holding opponents to .120.
“We have another great serving team coming in here, and they have one of the best outsides in the country,” Busboom Kelly said. “They’re coached really well; Beth Launiere has been a coach there for 30 years, and they’ve had a lot of success and a lot of changes where they can continue to have success. So it’ll be a battle. I also think the last few times Utah’s been here, it’s been five-gamers and wins; I think they won a couple. So really good program.”
Utah and Nebraska have played each other twice, both in Lincoln. The Huskers won 3-2 in 2014, and the Utes got their revenge in another five-set match in 2021.
The outside hitter Busboom Kelly mentioned is junior Kamryn Gibadlo, who is averaging 4.21 kills per set on .339 hitting. Middle blocker Emrie Moea’i is off to a great start as well despite being undersized at 6-foot, averaging 3.05 kills per set on .274 hitting and 1.45 blocks per set.
The Huskers will have a quick turnaround for their second match, returning to the Devaney Center on Saturday to take on Grand Canyon (5-1). Senior outside hitter Anaelena Ramirez leads the attack with 3.24 kills per set on .197 hitting. The Lopes run a 6-2 with freshman Bella Nunez both setting (4.15 assists per set) and attacking (2.35 kills per set on .318 hitting).
This weekend marks the first back-to-back of the season for Nebraska after getting a day off in between matches in the first three weeks, but the Huskers feel prepared.
“We had a lot of back-to-back last year, and I think a lot of us kind of like them,” Reilly said. “You kind of just stay in the game mindset; even when the game on Friday is done, then you know you have a game again the next day. But they’re kind of fun sometimes to just keep it rolling, and especially if you do get a win on Friday, then it feels good going in on Saturday.”
FS1 will televise Friday’s match against Utah while Nebraska Public Media will show Saturday’s 6 p.m. match against Grand Canyon locally.
