After a quiet night against Maryland on Friday, Ally Batenhorst made plenty of noise on Saturday as Nebraska swept Rutgers to improve to 12-0 in Big Ten play.
The Citadel fell in five sets to Western Carolina on Saturday, leaving Nebraska as the sole undefeated team in the country.
“They probably are feeling it a little bit, I think,” Coach John Cook said about the pressure of their position. “It’s just a natural thing, that and you’re ranked number one. You expect like ‘Oh, we’ve got to go out and play awesome every game and every match.’ That’s why I think this weekend, it kind of took them a little bit to to get going. We were jittery last night and jittery tonight starting out.”
The Cornhuskers took out-dueled the Scarlet Knights 25-22, 25-15, 25-12 at the Devaney Center to improve to 21-0, the program’s best start since the 2006 squad opened the year with 23 straight wins.
Batenhorst hit minus-.268 against Maryland but attempted just seven attacks. She bounced back on Saturday to tie her season high of 13 kills and did so on a career-best .545 hitting. She added four blocks to her line as well.
“She passed great last night,” Cook said. “I went through her attacks last night, and she hit great shots … She really responded really well tonight. I’m really happy for her, really proud of her and she was a force tonight. You could tell she wanted the ball, she had four blocks tonight and passed really well. It’s good to see her. She can do it. She came to prove it tonight and it was a really good rebound from last night.”
Merritt Beason continue her strong play with 12 kills on .409 hitting, four digs, three blocks and an ace. Andi Jackson added eight kills on .357 hitting and a match-high six blocks. Lexi Rodriguez led the defensive effort with a match-high 13 digs and added five assists.
Cook opted to start Maggie Mendelson alongside Jackson at middle block rather than normal starter Bekka Allick, and she responded by terminating on four of her five swings.
“She hit .600 and three blocks, and it’s good to see her out there,” Cook said. “Maggie is a very good competitor and we trust her and it was just a matter of trying to get her some playing time, give her a start. She doesn’t have many starts this year and I just wanted to give her a start. I thought she did great.”
Bergen Reilly dished out 34 assists and only had to dig two balls as Nebraska hit .384 and held Rutgers to .118. The Huskers out-blocked the Scarlet Knights 9.5 to 2.0, out-aced them four to one and out-dug them 33 to 24.
After five ties and a pair of lead changes in the first 15 rallies of the night, Nebraska created the first bit of separation with a 4-0 run to make it 11-7. The Huskers served two aces early then missed four straight serves, giving life to the Scarlet Knights. Nebraska sided out after three of the four errors to maintain the advantage, but Rutgers continued to chip away and tied it up again at 17-17.
Seven straight sideouts followed before Batenhorst and Jackson teamed up for a block, and Beason tacked on a kill to give the Huskers a 23-20 lead and they traded points the rest of the way. Reilly called her own number on Nebraska’s second set point opportunity, closing it out with a dump.
Nebraska out-hit Rutgers .303 to .242 behind four kills on .333 hitting from Batenhorst. Jackson was in on all three of Nebraska’s blocks.
“Yesterday I obviously didn’t get a lot of attempts, but I think going into this match we really wanted to put our foot on the gas and go for it,” Batenhorst said. “I think just coming into this match, I took that to heart and every set I got I went for it and it was a good night.”
Beason recorded kills on three straight rallies early in set two to give Nebraska the lead, which the Huskers would not relinquish. Rutgers pulled within one on two occasions, but the Huskers responded with an 8-2 run to pull away at 19-12. The Scarlet Knights scored the next two points, but Beason served a 5-0 run to give the Huskers set point and Batenhorst terminated two rallies later.
Nebraska hit .400 in the set behind seven kills on nine swings from Beason and six kills on nine attacks from Batenhorst. The Huskers recorded 4.5 blocks and held Rutgers to minus-.038 hitting. After five service errors in the first set, Nebraska only committed two in game two.
The Huskers have had a tendency to look a little sluggish coming out of the intermission at home this season, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday as Nebraska took control early with a 10-0 serving run for Rodriguez that made it 13-2. Nebraska continued to pull away the rest of the way with the lead peaking at 22-7.
“It’s just really cool to see us all clicking together because that’s the type of volleyball, especially that run of 10 points, we just played really clean and I know that’s the type of volleyball that we can play for the whole game,” Mendelson said. “Just seeing glimpses of it just really shows me that we’re capable of big things and I’m really excited for us to keep going and keep grinding.”
Nebraska hit .417 in the third and held Rutgers to .080.
“A great day for Husker athletics,” Cook said. “I think we started off this match kind of like what football did today and then we rallied and played some really good volleyball. I think Rutgers might be a little underrated just from the past. They’ve got two really nice players, they’ve got a really nice setter, so they’re much improved. I can see why they’ve gone five with a lot of teams, they beat Minnesota, and I thought they played pretty well for about a game and a half.
“They’re a much improved team and you can tell their belief level’s a lot higher than it’s been. I think we play them a week from tomorrow, so we’re going to have to bring it that afternoon.”
Nebraska will hit the road again next weekend for return trips to Penn State and Rutgers as the season rolls on.
