For the first time in 19 days, No. 2 Nebraska Volleyball will take the court in front of a packed Devaney Center crowd on Friday night.
After two straight weekends on the road, the Huskers are back at home to host a pair of Big Ten opponents, and sophomore middle blocker Bekka Allick said it feels “so good.”
“Having that routine, being able to see my friends and not have to rush homework,” Allick said. “We are student-athletes, so it’s just nice to be able to get back into that routine and get to see my mom more and just spend more time with her after games and maybe even see her before games, so that’s nice. And just to be back in Devaney, we miss our home crowd for sure.”
Coach John Cook said the team took Monday off to recharge but got back to work on Tuesday and Wednesday with two productive days of practice.
Nebraska went 4-0 during the road trip, but it wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing. The theme of the last two weeks was slow starts as Nebraska dropped the first set twice and needed late comebacks to win the other two. Cook said the team needs to learn how to play with a sense of urgency from the first serve, but Allick offered a different perspective.
“I would say our urgency has been there, but it’s just the nerves, I think composure,” Allick said. “This is some of these girls’ first season collegiately and playing away, some of them playing back in their home state, that can cause emotions. Probably some negative thoughts about ‘Oh, I wonder what they’re thinking about me, I wonder how I look.’ You put a lot of fake pressure on yourself. And so I think the urgency was there, but we let our emotions and our extra thoughts get the best of us in those moments and it did end up costing us the first set a couple of times.
“But I can say there were also moments when we weren’t being very urgent, we just expected because we’re bigger, we’re stronger, faster, all of these things, oh, our record’s great, that we were just going to win the first set because this is their name and this was their jersey. So it’s been a mixture of composure, but also entitlement. So how can we push through entitlement, remember who you are and who you play for, and everyone deserves our best shot as well.”
The benefit of their early struggles is it put them in some adverse situations they had navigate through, and the first-set comebacks against both Michigan State and Michigan show the team isn’t going to fold under pressure.
“It’s huge,” Cook said. “We’re building that muscle that it doesn’t matter if we’re down, we can still come back. You can’t really replicate that in practices, it’s things that have to happen in games, and it’s great to see some of our players, when we need it, they can really step up and make plays. That’s what great teams do.”
The Huskers struggled mightily from the service line during their first Big Ten road trip to Purdue and Indiana, serving 28 errors and just four aces in nine sets. Errors continued to plague the Huskers last weekend with 27 of them in seven sets, but the tradeoff was 16 aces including a season-high 10 against the Spartans. Cook said the amount of stress the team puts on its opponent from the service line depends on the night, but he is seeing encouraging signs in practice.
“That’s going to continue to get better,” Cook said. “I’m already seeing things this week that lead me to be really confident that our serving is continuing to get better … I don’t want to jinx us, but we went a lot of drills without missing a serve.”
On Friday, the Huskers will get a chance to show how much they’ve improved over the last week when they take on Michigan State (11-6, 3-3 Big Ten) for the second time in eight days. The Huskers beat the Spartans 3-1 in East Lansing last Friday, and the conference schedule the Spartans for a quick return trip.
“It’s weird,” Allick said. “It’s really easy to want to get comfortable and be like ‘Oh, we already beat them.’ And it was not even like a whole two weeks ago … You never know, because with us being so close and having beaten them, that fire that they probably felt after losing is still going to be there. I expect some bitterness. It’ll be a good match. It’ll be really fun.”
Nebraska hit .168 in round one against the Spartans, one of its lowest percentages of the season, but the Huskers also held Michigan State to .088. Freshman Taylah Holdem, Michigan State’s top attacker, notched a match-high 16 kills against Nebraska but also recorded 10 errors. Libero Nalani Iosia made the Huskers work to find the floor with a match-high 16 digs as well.
On Saturday, the Huskers will renew one of their greatest rivalries as No. 13 Penn State visits the Devaney Center. The Nittany Lions went 26-8 and made it to the Sweet 16 last season in year one for legendary coach Russ Rose’s successor, Katie Schumacher-Cawley, then hit the transfer portal hard in the offseason. They’re 12-3 so far this season including 6-0 in Big Ten play.
“They’ve got all-conference players all over the place,” Cook said. “They’re going to be a really great test for us. They’ve got some great players. Just look at it, they’ve got the best player from this school, the best player from that school. So it’ll be really great test for us.”
Cook was referring to former Ohio State Buckeye and 2022 Big Ten Setter of thee Year Mac Podraza and former Michigan pin hitter Jess Mruzik, who is third in the Big Ten in kills at 4.43 per set on .247 hitting. Penn State added three other transfers from outside the conference as well, including opposite hitter Camryn Hannah who is averaging 2.74 kills per set on .268 hitting.
“I think we’re really excited, especially because I think we feel well prepared because they obviously have a few transfers from inside the Big Ten that we’ve played against on other teams,” junior Lindsay Krause said. “So I think that’s going to be really interesting to see them all play together and against them when we have experience playing against them on other teams. But now, as Penn State coming in here, it’ll be really cool, especially because they’ve been having a lot of success.”
Penn State is third in the Big Ten in both hitting (.255) and opponent hitting (.167), behind the other two 6-0 teams in Nebraska and No. 1 Wisconsin. The Nittany Lions are also first in blocking (2.95 per set) and fewest aces allowed (0.82 per set).
First serve on Friday against the Spartans is set for 6 p.m. CT on Nebraska Public Media and Big Ten Plus. Saturday’s match against the Nittany Lions is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. on Big Ten Network.
