Nebraska and Creighton launched the new era of the I-80 volleyball rivalry with a bang on Tuesday night as a regular season indoor record 17,675 fans showed up to see the Huskers outlast the Bluejays in five sets.
They bested the previous record set by Wisconsin and Marquette at Fiserv Forum in 2023 by more than 600.
“Obviously a really fun match to be a part of, and the crowd was awesome, I thought, for both sides, and it was just another example of why this state makes volleyball so special,” said Dani Busboom Kelly after her first rivalry experience at the helm of the No. 1 Huskers.
Nebraska topped No. 18 Creighton 25-17, 21-25, 25-18, 24-26, 15-9 to improve to 9-0 on the season and 24-0 all-time in the series.
“It feels great,” Bergen Reilly said. “Creighton’s always going to be a big game. No matter where it’s at, what time of the day, it’s always going to be a huge game. It’s awesome that people of Nebraska showed out, and I had no doubt that they would. Obviously getting a win makes it a little sweeter, so it’ll be a good bus ride home.”
While red outnumbered blue in the stands, there was a strong and vocal contingent of Bluejay fans — including a packed student section — that made its presence felt. Late in the fourth set, the respective fan bases broke out into dueling chants — “Go Big Red” versus “Let’s go Jays” — that set the decibel level through the roof.
“It was very loud … [We] were up there, and we were like, we’re going to have to scream at each other during this play,” Reilly said. “But it’s super exciting, and it’s fun to be a part of, and it’s just a great atmosphere to be in, but it definitely does kind of make you go back to your training, because you can’t really hear each other, so you just have to have a feel of where each other is, and that comes from practice.”
Reilly had a great feel for her teammates regardless of the noise, totaling 43 assists, a match-high 19 digs and four kills. The Huskers hit .250 with four players notching double-digit kills.
Harper Murray led Nebraska with 17 kills on .160 hitting, 10 digs and four blocks. Andi Jackson added 13 kills on .400 hitting, four blocks and an ace. Taylor Landfair chipped in 12 kills.
The breakout star was freshman Virginia Adriano, however. The lefty from Italy went off for a season-best 13 kills on .320 hitting and two aces.
“She’s done a great job,” Reilly said. “I can’t even imagine trying to move across the country and not only being adjusted to the culture and your teammates and the language, but also trying to adjust to the volleyball. You can tell each and every day she comes in with just such a great mentality, and she’s so intentional in everything she does, and we’ve seen her grow so drastically just in the last couple of weeks. So I’m really proud of her, just even on the hard days, she’s still just being super intentional with what she’s doing, no matter what she is doing, whether it’s serving, blocking, hitting, all the things.”
Nebraska held Creighton (5-5) to .173 hitting. Busboom Kelly opted to give Olivia Mauch her second straight start at libero and the sophomore from Bennington recorded 16 digs and seven assists. Laney Choboy added 12 digs at right back as the Huskers out-dug the Bluejays by 15.
“It’s funny, people are like, ‘Who’s starting, Laney or Liv?’, and in my mind, they’re both starters and we need both of them as bad as the other,” Busboom Kelly said. “I thought our passing had been a little shaky the last couple games and just not confident, so I thought maybe Liv could study that out, and I thought she did a great job. And then Laney’s defensive mindset and her mentality back there is something this team desperately needs, so I thought she had one of her best games tonight, too.
“It’s not probably the end of the libero jersey for Laney, and I’m sure Liv will get a chance to wear it a bunch more, too. So again, it’s hard, because I look at them as they’re both starters. To me, I know one has to wear the jersey, but they’re both equally important to this team and our success.”
Creighton’s All-American hitter Ava Martin finished with 16 kills on .240 hitting. Kiara Rienhardt added 11 kills on .526 hitting and six blocks. Annalea Maeder totaled 38 assists and 12 digs.
Creighton opened the match with an ace from Maeder before both teams settled in to rattle off 13 straight sideouts. Mauch finally snapped the streak by inducing an overpass with a strong serve, and Jackson did the rest to give Nebraska its first lead at 8-7.
Creighton tied it at 10-10 before Nebraska took control with a 7-2 run that saw kills from four different Huskers. Nebraska gradually extended the lead from there before Jackson closed it out with an ace.
Jackson’s final serve capped a big set that included five kills and a block assist. Nebraska hit .303 while holding Creighton to .065 and nine kills. Martin didn’t find the floor until her final swing of the set.
However, the Bluejay star matched her first-set output with a kill on the first point of set two, triggering a 3-0 start with a pair of Bluejay blocks. Nebraska quickly tied it up, but Creighton used a 4-1 run to retake the lead for good.
Marton got loose and the Huskers racked up miscues throughout the set, allowing the Jays to extend their lead out to six at 20-14. Nebraska put together a 7-2 run ending in a solo stuff from Murray to cut the deficit to one at 22-21, triggering a Creighton timeout.
However, Choboy missed her serve out of the break, Omaha Westside grad Destiny Ndam-Simpson served an ace and Murray got caught in the net to end the game with a 3-0 run.
Nebraska committed nine attack errors, three service errors and one blocking error in the second set, hitting .118. Murray and Landfair had four kills apiece but combined for six attack errors. Martin terminated four times for the Jays, who hit .233.
The Huskers played much cleaner volleyball in set three, notching 13 kills before their first attack error. Nebraska won eight-of-10 rallies including a 4-0 run with Mauch serving to take a 14-8 lead, then Adriano served a 5-0 run to extend the lead to 10 at 19-9.
“I think we just fall back on our training and just go back to what we know and playing Nebraska volleyball,” Reilly said of the turnaround. “We knew the second set was not even close to our best, and we only lost by four. So that was encouraging to us, but it also kind of lit a fire under us too. If they’re going to have to beat us, they have to beat us because they play better than us, not just because we hand them the game.”
Crighton put together a 4-0 run that included three straight errors for the Huskers, but a timeout settled the team down. After trading service errors, Adriano closed it out with back-to-back kills.
The freshman dominated the set, terminating on all seven of her swings as Nebraska hit .353 as a team with 17 kills. Creighton only managed 10 kills on a .214 clip.
“After game two, we told the team we’ve got to trust Virginia to kill some balls back there,” Busboom Kelly said. “She came out of the locker room and killed a bunch of balls, and then we got her serve going, and you just see what a weapon that is when she trusts it and I thought it was awesome. Huge game for Virginia, and we really needed that as a team, and I think for her personally, just to have a great game in a big environment where she has to take over the game or we might lose.”
The fourth set was tight throughout, with seven ties and a lead change early. Nebraska finally created some separation midway through as Murray served a 4-0 run to head into the media timeout ahead 15-11. However, Creighton responded with 7-2 stretch to regain the lead at 18-17.
Six more ties and two more lead changes followed, leading to a 24-all situation late as Reilly and Jackson blocked a Martin swing on Creighton’s first set-point opportunity. However, Landfair hit wide to give the Jays another crack and Martin took advantage with her sixth kill of the game to send the match to a fifth set.
Creighton edged Nebraska in hitting, .200 to .150. Reinhardt added four kills to Martin’s six for the Bluejays. Landfair led Nebraska with five kills.
Creighton struck first with a pair of aces from redshirt freshman Nora Wurtz, a Nebraska native, but Nebraska tied it up three times before surging ahead with a 6-1 run, taking a 9-5 lead.
The Bluejays pulled within two and had a chance to ratchet up the pressure even further as Landfair shanked Saige Damrow’s serve, but Mauch tracked the errant pass down in front of her bench and Creighton hit into the net on the return shot, triggering a 5-1 run to end the match. Allick put an exclamation point on the win with the match-point kill.
“I thought our team was really good in game five, and kind of went back to what we’ve been trusting all year and just started playing our game,” Busboom Kelly said. “I think that’s a great sign of where we’re headed is when we can play our loosest volleyball in the fifth game.”
Allick and Murray both went 3-for-3 as Nebraska hit .438 and held Creighton to .059.
“We’ve called this kind of a state of Nebraska showcase for volleyball, and what a showcase it was for the fans, for our athletes, for Nebraska,” Creighton coach Brian Rosen said. “They’re a phenomenal team. I’ve said it before; I think they are the true No. 1 team in the country right now. We’ve gotten now to see, I don’t know, one, two, three, four and all the other teams compete. They’re very balanced; they have very few weaknesses.”
In addition to Nebraska on Tuesday, Creighton has faced Penn State at full strength, Texas (currently No. 2 in the AVCA Coaches Poll and receiving first-place votes) and Louisville (currently No. 3), giving him good perspective on the top of the sport.
Nebraska will return to the Devaney Center on Saturday to wrap up its nonconference slate against Arizona.
