Nebraska moved into sole possession of first place in the Big Ten and rose to No. 1 in the national polls with its win over Wisconsin on Saturday, but there’s no time for celebration for the 19-0 Huskers. The job is only half done and the finish line is still a long way off.
“We’ve hit the halfway point, so we kind of look at this as a time to evaluate,” Coach John Cook said. “What are we doing well, what do we have to do better? Wisconsin was a great learning match for us, so our focus this week is how are we going to get better for the second half of the Big Ten. I think we’ve got a very challenging second half and two matches this weekend. It’ll be nice to be home again and then I know we’re going to be hitting the road.”
Cook said his message to the team this week will be a challenge to find a way to widen the gap between the Huskers and the rest of the pack rather than resting on their laurels.
“Human nature is naturally just to take a deep breath and, ‘We got through the first half, we beat Wisconsin,’” Cook said. “So my job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s human nature, and this is the point of the year that teams are either going like this [up] or they’re going like this [down]; nobody stays the same. So it’s a mental battle, but we’ve been talking about this since January.”
Saturday’s win over Wisconsin was big for Nebraska for a variety of reasons beyond the Big Ten title race implications. The Huskers dug themselves a big hole as their offense broke down in the second and third sets, but they found a way to reset and battle back to win sets four and five. Cook said the match was a great experience for freshman Bergen Reilly, who earned her third Big Ten Setter of the Week honor on Monday.
“She’ll learn a lot from it,” Cook said. “She had some really awesome moments and she had some tough moments, which is to be expected. So those kinds of experiences can really help a young setter figure out what she needs to do and how important every set is and her location and tempo, the consistency of it, because they make you pay if it’s not good.”
Wisconsin certainly made them pay for predictable offense and poor hitting decisions in the second set with 12 blocks, which Cook joked was simply part of Nebraska’s game plan.
“We did that on purpose,” Cook said. “It was the rope-a-dope. You know Muhammad Ali, George Foreman? The rope-a-dope, just wear them out and then eventually get them. So that’s kind of what we were doing on that.”
On a more serious note, Cook said the Huskers simply got back to doing what they’ve been trained to do after things got away from them early on. Reilly’s setting and the team’s decision-making got better as the match went on.
During Nebraska’s 10-match losing streak to Wisconsin, the Huskers and Badgers played 10 deuce games (sets decided by two points). Nebraska won just one of them, which goes a long way toward explaining Wisconsin’s dominance in the series. On Saturday, Nebraska went 2-0 in deuce games (sets four and five).
“What this team is getting to understand is they’ve got to win those close games and they’re not afraid to make the play and go for it,” Cook said. “And you don’t know until you get in those situations. But they’re starting to show that they can do that and they’ve got the confidence and the belief to do it.”
In the end, the five-set thriller between the undefeated and top-ranked teams in the country lived up to its “Match of the Century” billing, both in person and in terms of television viewership. Nebraska-Wisconsin was the most-watched regular season match in college volleyball history with 612,000 viewers.
“I saw the numbers today,” Cook said. “It looks like we did pretty well, a record and competed with football. I’m not surprised; they did a great job of promoting that match and I think that the biggest thing is the match delivered. It was a great match and people are still fascinated by it and still talking about it.”
Not only did volleyball compete with football, it actually out-drew the Nebraska-Northwestern game (560,000), which Cook didn’t want to say first. However, once prompted he did remind those watching that the volleyball team also holds the attendance record for a contest inside Memorial Stadium.
“Did we ever think that day would happen? Probably not,” Cook said. “But you could feel, this whole year for volleyball has kind of gone crazy with fans and viewership and all that. I know our Sunday matches, I think we were really high up there … It’s great to see and I’m sure the Big Ten is very happy.”
Saturday’s match was the latest example of the massive growth of volleyball interest, and the Big Ten Network has played a big part in that with its commitment to showcasing the sport.
“It’s been a long process, but I think the key is Sue Maryott who used to be with NET,” Cook said. “She went to the Big Ten and ever since then it’s gone like this. She is very passionate about volleyball and because she was here she saw what could happen, and now I think she’s really helped spread that. So I think she’s your MVP for the Big Ten. She has great ideas and what she wants to do and they do great features that people love watching.”
The Huskers can’t afford to dwell on the Wisconsin victory, however. The second half of Big Ten play begins at home this weekend as Maryland and Rutgers visit the Devaney Center.
“My job is to get us ready to play Maryland Friday,” Cook said. “So I’m not really talking about that match anymore. It’s just what can we learn and what can we learn from the first half of the Big Ten and how are we going to get better?”
One way to get better would be to get Lindsay Krause (ankle) back in the lineup. Cook didn’t provide an update on when that might happen, but he did say she will be back at some point this season and was already doing rehab work on an underwater treadmill over the weekend. Until she returns. With Krause out agin tis weekend, the Huskers will continue to rely on Ally Batenhorst, who produced some big kills in the Huskers’ win over the Badgers.
