Volleyball season is here in Nebraska. The Big Ten preseason favorite Huskers will head into the season ranked second nationally in the AVCA Coaches Poll, but first they’ll give the fans an early look at this year’s squad in Saturday’s Red-White Scrimmage.
To get Husker fans ready for the 2024 season, we’re previewing the team, position by position. We started with the setters, and up next is a look at the loaded pin hitter group.
Roster:
>> No. 13 Merritt Beason, Senior (2023: 3.76 KPS, .282 hitting, 2.05 DPS, 0.88 BPS, 0.27 SAPS)
>> No. 22 Lindsay Krause, Senior (2023: 2.50 KPS, .285 hitting, 0.57 BPS)
>> No. 27 Harper Murray, Sophomore (2023: 3.23 KPS, .237 hitting, 2.07 DPS, 0.54 BPS, 0.30 SAPS)
>> No. 12 Taylor Landfair, Senior (2023: 3.19 KPS, .222 hitting, 2.03 DPS, 0.48 BPS, 0.31 SAPS)
>> No. 21 Skyler Pierce, Freshman
The headliner for the group is Merritt Beason. The team captain and first-team All-American is back for her second year with the Huskers after earning All-Big Ten First Team and AVCA Region Player of the Year honors in 2023.
The 6-foot-4 opposite hitter led the Huskers in points last year, hitting the 20-kill mark five times and recording five double-doubles. She earned four Big Ten Player of the Week and one AVCA National Player of the Week honors. Beason put up a season-high 27 kills in a five-set win at Penn State and recorded a season-high eight blocks in the team’s NCAA Tournament win over Arkansas at the Devaney Center.
Beason is entrenched as a team captain and the starting opposite hitter, but she’s the only natural right side on the team. With no obvious back-up at this point, Cook is rotating all of his pins at both positions during practice.
“We’re training everybody over there, because in one rotation, they all have to hit on the right side,” Cook said. “So they’re doing everything over there on both sides. And again, it makes them better volleyball players, just to be able to go in at those positions.”
On the left side, Harper Murray is back after a third-team All-America freshman campaign as a six-rotation player. She won both Big Ten and AVCA North Region Freshman of the Year and earned a spot on the All-Big Ten First Team. She recorded double-digit kills 23 times with eight double-doubles.
Murray faced some offseason legal trouble, receiving probation for a DUI and entering a diversion program following a shoplifting incident, but will not face a suspension. Murray shared a message with Husker fans on social media last month.
Heading into year two, Murray said she’s focusing on the little things to take her game to another level.
“With having a year under my belt, I think it brings a lot of different viewpoints for me just from playing the past year,” Murray said. “So I think just working on the little things, and staying disciplined, just because that’s something Coach is always on us for.”
Lindsay Krause opened the 2023 season as the other starter on the left side and was playing some of the best volleyball of her career before a serious ankle injury in practice cut her season short after 14 matches.
Krause averaged 2.82 kills per set on .366 hitting in six Big Ten match before the injury, earning Big Ten Player of the Week after putting up 24 kills on .458 hitting against the Michigan schools including a season-high 15 kills against the Wolverines.
Cook chose Krause to represent Nebraska at Big Ten Media Days, and she spoke about her journey in Lincoln that has included playing at multiple positions, bouncing between starter and reserve and injury.
“I think I’ve definitely had a very creative college career, you could say that,” Krause said. “I think it’s been a little bit all over the place, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s taught me so much about who I am as a person, who I am as a volleyball player, building relationships and everything that comes along with that. I would say looking forward to this season, just going into every day being so grateful to be where I am and being so appreciative of every single day. And I think that’s something that being injured taught me, was how much I love what I’m doing and though some days it can be monotonous, it can get tiring, I genuinely love it and I missed it so much when I couldn’t do it.”
Krause performed well in the spring exhibition in Kearney and has been working to regain her pre-injury explosiveness throughout the spring and summer. Sophomore setter Bergen Reilly spoke highly of Krause’s performance in the practice gym this preseason.
“She looks really good,” Reilly said. “We talked about it a little bit yesterday, she’s just so happy to be on the court every single day, and she’s not taking a day for granted, and you can really tell in her play. She puts it all out there every single day. She’s looking better than I’ve ever seen her.”
Ally Batenhorst and Hayden Kubik Cook opted to transfer out of the program, landing at USC and Tennessee, respectively. However, the portal also served Nebraska well as Cook made a significant addition in the form of 2022 Big Ten Player of the Year Taylor Landfair. The former Minnesota Golden Gopher led the Big Ten in kills per set at 4.35 on .257 hitting in 2022 before taking a step back last season while playing under a new coach in Keegan Cook. She still made All-Big Ten, averaging 3.19 kills per set on .222 hitting, but chose to enter the portal after the season to seek a fresh start.
Landfair has had to play a bit of catch-up as a late-arriving transfer who didn’t have the opportunity to go through spring ball with her new team, but she’s upped the level in an already highly competitive group.
“We go a lot of reps, we go at a fast pace, and I just think for her, sometimes she’s not used to that,” Cook said. “I think it just takes everybody a while to adjust to that. But I think she really likes it. She gave a very impressive talk last night to our team about what her why is, why she wants to play here, and why she wants to play volleyball. It was very, very impressive.”
Landfair has been all ears in practice thus far as her new coaches have offered tips and critiques for sharpening her skills. She’s focusing most on improving her attacking, especially out of system, and her passing consistency.
“I’m definitely taking every single day and every single piece of feedback they give me to my advantage because I feel like there are some parts of my game that I definitely want to make sure that I get better at,” Landfair said. “They definitely pinpointed those certain areas of my game and are just giving me so much feedback, giving me so much reassurance and encouragement when I’m trying to make those changes.”
The other addition to the room is highly-regarded freshman Skyler Pierce, the 6-foot-2 pin from Lenexa, Kansas. She gave Husker fans a glimpse of the future in the team’s spring exhibition win over Denver, putting up 10 kills on .389 hitting while playing three rotations.
In addition to the amount of talent at the position, the pin hitters are also learning from one of the best to ever play the position in assistant coach Joran Larson, who returned to practice last week after helping the United States capture the silver medal at the Paris Olympics.
“It’s been great,” Larson said. “Really eager to learn and come to work every day, and we have a lot of depth, which is a good problem, but also it’s hard. People are going to have to embrace roles, or just get used to, maybe a norm they’re not used to. But I think everybody’s needed on this team, and to win a national championship you need everyone, so I think they’re going to embrace that that as well.”
Cook said he has not yet decided on a rotation for the season and expects to play multiple lineups during the Red-White Scrimmage on Saturday.
