Every point in volleyball starts with a serve and a pass, and it’s hard to be a great team without excelling in those areas. For No. 1 Nebraska volleyball, however, the publicly available stats paint the serve and pass picture as a mixed bag through 12 matches.
On the one hand, the Huskers are leading the country in opponent hitting percentage at .119, a difficult feat to accomplish if you’re serving lollipops. On the other, Nebraska is tied for last in the country in ace average at 1.0 per game (and that’s after serving five aces in each of last week’s two sweeps). While more aggressive serving has been an emphasis for the Huskers throughout the season, Coach Dani Busboom Kelly isn’t particularly worried about their lack of aces.
“The goal is always to get them out of system more than acing,” Busboom Kelly said. “The aces typically come, but from a serving standpoint, we’re serving pretty well. I’ve said it before, we measure a lot of serving on three-point runs; can players go on runs? That’s what will bust a game open versus one ace is great, but if you can score three in a row, that’s huge. We’re going to continue to focus on that more than just aces per set. We also don’t have a top-spinner or a really unique server that can sometimes skew those statistics.”
Harper Murray leads the Huskers with 10 aces this season. She also leads the team with 14 serving runs of at least three points, hitting that mark on 17.9% of her trips to the line. The Huskers have scored a team-best 80 points off her serving rotation this season.
Taylor Landfair isn’t a full-time server, as she alternates with Teraya Sigler based on Busboom Kelly’s “gut feel,” but her rotation has been Nebraska’s most productive on average (though small sample size applies). She only has four aces (and 12 errors), but Nebraska has scored 0.6 points per serve on her 70 attempts this season. She’s put together a run of three-plus points on just over a fifth of her trips to the service line this season with six such streaks, but they’ve all come in two matches (three, six, three and four against Utah and five and four against Michigan).
On the other side of things, Nebraska is fourth in the country in hitting percentage at .317, an indication that the offense is operating at a high level. It’s almost impossible to hit north of .300 without passing well.
However, Nebraska is 15th in the Big Ten in reception percentage at 92.1% as the Huskers have surrendered 51 aces (nine more than they’ve managed themselves). While Nebraska served 10 aces last week, Michigan and Maryland combined for nine to nearly cancel that out.
“Nine aces isn’t good, but I also think that when we when we’re not getting aced, we’re passing well, so that’s a positive, and our attack percentage is still very, very good, so I’m not overly concerned,” Busboom Kelly said. “I think it’s a lot of reasons why we’re kind of getting aced a lot, and I think a lot of them are in our control.”
One thing in Nebraska’s control is the decision to go after a ball. The Huskers have let a number of serves go this season thinking they were headed out only for them to land on the court. To address that, Busboom Kelly is encouraging her passers (primarily Laney Choboy, Teraya Sigler, Harper Murray and Olivia Mauch) to be more aggressive.
“It’s a lot of communication and relationships and just the confidence piece,” Busboom Kelly said. “When your passers aren’t confident, then they don’t want to take those tough serves. So we’re working on just getting more confidence with them and making sure they understand that they’re not being evaluated on one every single passing stat. That’s not how I’m going to write a passing lineup, so they shouldn’t be scared to have a bad pass. It’s obviously better than getting aced, so I think it’s just more, ‘Oh, I don’t want to take that one, because it’s going to go towards my stats.’
“And I also think teams tee off against us and serve really, really tough, and sometimes a lot more of those go in than out. I felt like Maryland, if you watch it on film, a lot of those serves were very, very tough.”
Busboom Kelly made the change from Choboy to Mauch at libero in part to sure up Nebraska’s passing after some inconsistent performances early, though that position battle continues in practice on a daily basis. While each individual player earns a passing grade, Busboom Kelly is more focused on how the pieces all fit together.
“I also want to keep reiterating it’s our passing number as a group, not Laney passed this, Liv passed this, Harper passed this, Teraya passed this,” Busboom Kelly said. “What are we passing as a group is the important stat, not individually, because it’s how do they make each other better or worse, or whatever it may be.”
Nobody is more affected by the quality of a team’s passing than the setter, whose options are limited by the amount she has to run around to get underneath passes. While perfect passing makes her life easy, Bergen Reilly is continuing to encourage her teammates through the rough stretches that pop up from time to time.
“I remind them high middle, and I can set anybody,” Reilly said. “We don’t need perfect passes every time. We have a lot of great passers back there, and it can be hard to want to be a perfectionist, and so I know that they want to give me perfect passes every time, but it’s always just the reminder of, hey, if you get it high in the middle of the court, we can work with that.
“It’s been a big focus, and I have full confidence in our passers back there, even though there was a rough game. It’s a very mental part of the game, and so just going back to the basics is really important.”
Serve and pass was the foundation of Nebraska volleyball during the John Cook era, but the Huskers have also faltered in those areas in some big moments since their last championship. While the players feel they can get better in all areas as the season goes on, it would be a safe bet to assume serve and pass will be a point of emphasis for the team as the Huskers navigate the rest of the season.
