Olivia Mauch said on Tuesday she thought No. 1 Nebraska volleyball had a chance to make a statement as the Huskers opened Big Ten play this week, and that’s exactly what they did with a quick sweep over Michigan Wednesday night.
Nebraska (11-0) dominated the serve and pass game to sweep Michigan (10-2) 25-22, 25-10, 25-13 in the teams’ conference opener in Lincoln. The 75-minute match is the shortest of the season for the Huskers so far.
“It feels great,” Bergen Reilly said. “I think we’d kind of been waiting to have one of these games where we just make a statement, and I think we really did that tonight, so we’re really happy with starting this way. But we know that it’s 10 long weeks and one game in isn’t going to decide much, but just really taking it day by day, game by game, and hopefully we can keep having games like this.”
The Huskers finished with five aces by five different players — one shy of the team’s season high — and kept Michigan out of sorts throughout the last two sets, resulting in a .108 hitting percentage. Nebraska entered Big Ten play Wednesday last in the conference in aces at 0.89 per set.
“We’ve been working a lot in practice about just turning up the speed on our serves, and we haven’t been super happy with our serving,” Reilly said. “It’s just been a little too easy, and that’s been a really big focus of practice the last couple days. Just trusting it and thumping it and really getting some speed on it, and it worked.”
Reilly finished with 28 assists, nine digs and five kills on .556 hitting. Early in the match, she passed her head coach on Nebraska’s rally scoring era career assists chart, moving into the top five.
Bergen Reilly sets the ball against Michigan. Photo by John S. Peterson.
“It’s super cool,” Reilly said. “Being a setter at Nebraska is such an honor, and getting to do it at such a high level with such amazing teammates is something that I’ll never forget, and I don’t know, I hope I’m only getting started.”
Reilly said Wednesday was one of the team’s best passing days of the season, and that resulted in a .380 hitting percentage and five players hitting over .390.
Harper Murray led the way with 11 kills on .391 hitting and seven digs. Virginia Adriano kept her hot streak going with 10 kills on .444 hitting. Rebekah Allick added nine kills on .412 hitting while Andi Jackson chipped in eight kills on nine swings for a .778 clip.
Mauch led the defense with a match-high 11 digs as the Huskers out-dug the Wolverines 37-24. Nebraska held Michigan star outside hitter Allison Jacobs to eight kills on .143 hitting.
“I thought we played really well,” Dani Busboom Kelly said. “I thought Michigan came out on fire. When their offense is clicking, it’s really hard to stop. We were hanging in there, hanging in there, and I thought we did a great job of just trusting our scout and understanding that they were playing almost perfect, and we just had to keep doing what we were doing, and things would start to go our way. So just really proud of our adjustments from Saturday to today, and the way we prepped and played defense.”
The teams felt each other out early in set one before the Huskers used a 5-1 run including back-to-back kills from Allick to take the lead for good at 8-5. Nebraska stretched the advantage out to seven at 16-9 with a 5-0 run featuring Adriano at the service line.
The teams traded points briefly before Michigan mounted a comeback, winning 9-of-12 rallies to pull within one at 22-21. However, Wolverine mistakes allowed the Huskers to escape as they took three of the final four points for a 1-0 match lead.
Both teams hit over .300 with Nebraska at .302 and Michigan at .232. The Huskers only recorded one stuff as the blockers were often slow to close throughout the game, but the middles feasted offensively with five kills apiece, accounting for 10 of Nebraska’s 18 kills.
“They were always up and they were moving and running just different slant routes and hitting all their shots, so Michigan really couldn’t get super comfortable on one thing,” Reilly said. “Props to our middles; again, that’s something we’ve really been working on is just, yeah, it may look like the same route to the crowd and to the naked eye, but they’re working really hard to change up their routes, even if it’s super slightly, just to throw the block off a little.”
The Huskers upped the pressure from the end line to start set two with Mauch serving a 5-0 run (including the first ace of the match). Adriano followed with three straight including an overpass smash from Jackson and Murray served a 4-0 stretch (including another ace) for a 12-2 lead.
Michigan briefly rallied with a 7-2 run, cutting the deficit to five, but Nebraska won 11 of the last 12 rallies including another 5-0 serving run for Mauch to close out the set.
“I thought our servers started really hitting their zones,” Busboom Kelly said. “Their libero was great; we thought early on maybe we could get them in trouble serving her. She proved us wrong, but we adjusted out of that real quick, and the hats off to our servers. They were also changing depths really well. Olivia got a few aces short, which is really good to see.”
Michigan’s passing fell apart in set two as the Huskers put down five overpass kills, including three for Jackson. Nebraska hit .565 and held Michigan to .000 with five kills and five errors. Adriano terminated on six of her seven swings after a tough first set.
The third set saw four ties early, the last at 8-8, before Michigan’s passing fell apart again. Reilly served a 7-0 run with an ace, then Taylor Landfair followed with a 5-0 run including an ace of her own to give the Huskers a 20-9 lead.
Busboom Kelly took advantage of the big lead to get some of her reserves in the match including Campbell Flynn, who served an ace to give the Huskers match point, and Michigan hit wide two points later to end it.
The Huskers hit .346 behind Murray’s four kills and held Michigan to minus-.033. The Wolverines only managed 11 kills in the final two sets combined after terminating 13 times in set one.
“They run a really fast offense and they do it really well, so we knew that that was going to be a little bit of an adjustment,” Reilly said. “We practiced it these last couple days but doing it in a game is just slightly different. So we settled in there, but our serving really picked it up in the second and third sets, and ultimately that’s going to help your defense out too.”
The Huskers will get a couple days to prepare for match No. 2 of Big Ten play as Maryland will visit the Devaney Center on Saturday, with first serve set for 3 p.m. CT on Nebraska Public Media.
