Late in the fourth set against No. 1 Wisconsin on Saturday, Harper Murray was hitting deep in the negative. She had 10 errors and just six kills on 34 swings. Her last error put the Huskers in a bad spot, down 23-21 in the set and 2-1 in the match.
The Huskers responded by winning the next two rallies to tie it up, leading to a Wisconsin timeout. Coach John Cook said he had some choice words for his star freshman during the break, and from that point forward, she played nearly flawless volleyball.
Murray made a couple of key plays down the stretch in game four and dominated the fifth set to lead Nebraska to a 3-2 win over the Badgers, snapping a 10-match losing streak in the series and giving the Huskers their first win over their conference rival since 2017, fulfilling a promise she and her classmates made before they even set foot on campus.
“Harper got chewed out in that last timeout in game four, and she responded really well,” Cook said. “Harper is a competitor. She did struggle tonight, but she passed really well. She hit three bombs serves in game four when we really needed it, made that three-point run that really got us back in game four. But she’s a competitor and I’m super proud of her that she was able to find a way.”
Murray struggled a bit in serve receive early in the season as teams targeted her heavily, but she passed 45 serves without an error on Saturday. She’s struggled from the service line as well, and she did have three errant serves in the match. But in game four, Murray went off-speed for a kill to save match point and tie it at 24-24, then with the game on the line she stepped up to serve. The Huskers scored on her first serve thanks to a Wisconsin net violation, then her second serve forced an overpass, which Bekka Allick put away to send it to game five.
“We talked in the fourth set and I was just kind of like ‘Look, what do you need? You’re in this position for a reason and you’re one heck of a player and if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be out here right now,’” junior captain Merritt Beason said of Murray. “I know that she has a ton of belief in herself, and sometimes I have to remind her a little bit because she’s really hard on herself and that’s what makes her so good.”
Murray was just getting started, however. After struggling to find the floor through the first four sets, she terminated nearly every time she took a swing in game five, especially down the stretch. With Nebraska trailing 12-11, Murray notched three straight kills to give Nebraska a pair of match points. Wisconsin ended the run with a sideout, but Nebraska went back to Murray to close it out.
She hit wide, but a challenge revealed that Caroline Crawford had clipped the net on her block attempt, ending the match. Murray totaled seven kills on nine errorless swings in game five and closed it out with a personal 4-1 run.
“I told her in game five, I said ‘When we get to rotations five and six, you’re going to have to kill some balls because you’re going to have opportunities,’ and she got an unbelievable kill on that one out of system, she went up off one leg and killed it,” Cook said. “She got another great kill and she got them in the net on match point.”
Murray finished with 14 kills on .091 hitting, the second-lowest percentage of her young career. She added a career-high 15 digs for her fifth double-double of the season to help the Huskers earn their biggest win of the season.
“At the end of the day, we want to play as a team, we want to play for each other,” Murray said. “So my mindset honestly was just ‘Do it for my team, and they need me right now.’ I’ll be the first to admit that wasn’t my best game. But at the end of the day, I had to do it for my teammates, and I had to figure out some way to get to us a point.”
Saturday was just the latest instance of Murray rising to the occasion, and she wasn’t the only one. The Huskers took down a veteran Wisconsin team with four freshmen in the starting lineup, and each of them made a significant impact.
“I think all of our freshmen stepped up at very big moments during that match, and it’s really cool to have Harper, obviously, but also all of them be able to step in in big moments,” Beason said. “It’s very special, but they all just have a ton of confidence in themselves, they know what they bring to the game and they know at the end of the day what they can do, and they do it.”
Through the first 19 matches of her college career, Murray is averaging 3.4 kills per set on .285 hitting, better numbers than any Nebraska pin from the previous few seasons. For context, Mikaela Foecke averaged 3.09 kills on .277 hitting as a freshman in 2015. She went on to earn the NCAA Championship Most Outstanding Player honor at the end of that season as the Huskers took home the national title.
Things will only get tougher the rest of the way as the wear and tear of the Big Ten grind begins to set in and scouting reports begin to hone in on her tendencies, but Murray’s performance to this point has her in elite company, and Saturday showed she’s more than capable of fighting through adversity and delivering in the clutch.
