Nebraska volleyball is one of 16 teams who made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. After Friday night, that list will be down to eight.
The Huskers are happy to still be playing, with their ultimate goal still very much within reach.
“I think it’s awesome,” Lexi Rodriguez said. “Every team at the beginning of the year has a goal to make it to the last game. We’re in the round of 16, soon to be round of eight if we win, and I think that just being here and not taking for granted any game that we get to play, especially at home, is a big deal to us. I think we’re all really blessed to be here and just excited to keep competing.”
No. 5 seed Dayton (31-2), No. 2 Wisconsin (25-6) and No. 6 Texas A&M (21-7) also traveled to Lincoln to compete on Friday and Sunday for a trip to the Final Four in Louisville next week.
“I know our crowd will be fired up,” Coach John Cook said. “There’s going to be some great matches. Four great teams here, it’s a great regional so there should be a lot of exciting volleyball, and I think our team’s fired up for the challenge.”
The advantage for the home team — aside from the home crowd on match day — is the ability to maintain a normal routine: to sleep in their own beds, eat at their normal spots and avoid the strain of travel. However, for every host except for Louisville, this is guaranteed to be the final home stand. That means this weekend will be the final appearance(s) at the Devaney Center for Rodriguez, Merritt Beason and the other seniors. Rodriguez, the four-year starter and three-year captain, called that realization a sad thought but said she’s trying to enjoy this week as much as she can. Beason called it “do or die.”
“Honestly, that’s kind of where we’re at right now,” Beason said. “But I think I try not to think about it in that way, and just taking it one step and one game at a time, because it is a heavy thing and it’s pretty emotional, so I just don’t want to let myself think about it.”
While there are two home matches on the schedule, Nebraska will have to beat a Dayton team that ranks in the top 10 nationally in both hitting percentage (.301) and opponent hitting percentage (.140) on Friday to earn the second match. The Flyers beat South Carolina 3-1 in the first round and No. 4 seed Baylor 3-2 in the second to punch their ticket to the Lincoln Regional.
“They’ve got a lot of confidence,” Cook said. “They do everything really well. They’ve got a great player who leads them, and they’re an older team. They have a lot of seniors, graduates, so they’ve been playing together for a long time. This is college volleyball: when you get that combination, you have a chance to be really good, and they’ve really taken advantage of that. Anytime you win 30 matches in college volleyball, you’ve had a great season.”
That great player is outside hitter Lexie Almodovar, a fifth-year senior who ranks sixth in Division I at 5.02 kills per set, the highest remaining average in the tournament, while hitting .308. She also averages 2.54 digs per set and leads Dayton with 35 service aces.
“She reminds me a lot of the Arkansas girl last year,” Cook said. “She’s just undersized, but, man, she’s a heck of a player. She does everything great. She gets a ton of swings. Whatever she’s taking, I want some of it, because she’s held up really, really well.”
The “Arkansas girl” is Jill Gillen, a 5-foot-7 pin who the Huskers faced with the Razorbacks in last year’s Elite Eight. Almodovar is listed at 5-foot-8, a stark contrast to the pins Nebraska usually faces in the Big Ten, where the top 10 in kills all stand 6-foot or taller. However, that doesn’t change Nebraska’s defensive game plan.
“We approach it pretty much the same as we approach anyone else,” Beason said. “She’s a really good player, and we know she’s going to get a lot of balls, and so just making sure we know her tendencies and know what she wants to do, and that way in certain situations, I kind of know what to expect. I would say we treat them the same way as if we were playing Sarah Franklin or whoever; we treat all of them the same way, and just try to make sure that I know what they want to do in certain situations.”
Junior middle blocker Liana Sarkissian is second on the team at 2.54 kills per set on .385 hitting and first in blocks at 1.1 per set. Senior setter Alyssa Miller runs the offense at 10.79 assists per set. Nebraska will need a strong serving performance to minimize Miller’s ability to set the middle and force out-of-system or sub-optimal sets to Almodovar. Junior libero Karissa Kaminski leads the defense with 4.23 digs per set.
The Huskers will need to be locked in defensively, but that’s an area in which they’ve improved throughout the season. Nebraska ranks seventh in opponent hitting percentage, narrowly behind Dayton, and has done it against one of the most challenging schedules in the country. Beason credited the work the coaching staff does to put together game plans and prepare them for what they’ll face on the court.
“But also just we’ve kind of built this trust within each other, whether it’s middles or pins or Lexi and whoever’s playing back row, that we’re able to adjust on the fly,” Beason continued. “I think that’s something that we kind of struggled with maybe a little bit earlier on, i.e. SMU, things like that. We’ve kind of learned from those matches of, ‘OK, sometimes it’s not always going to be spot on, and how are we going to adjust in those moments?’ We’ve kind of just opened that communication between front row and back row so if we need to adjust something and figure something out, we can.
“Sometimes we don’t even have to let it get to the point where the coaches have to tell us, we kind of just make small adjustments on our own, and just having that open communication from front row to back row all time, so that we’re all on the same page.”
The intensity picks up with each successive round in the postseason, and the Huskers feel that pressure. However, they’ve succeed at this stage before and know what it takes to advance.
“I think it’s inevitable to have nerves or anxiousness, but I think, ultimately, we just have so much drive and so much trust in one another, and we want to play for each other,” Rodriguez said. That’s, I think, what’s going to drive us these next few matches, is that we’re trying to do it for the person next to each other, and hopefully at the end of the day, that will be enough to get us to a national championship, which is what we want.”
The other side of the Lincoln Regional will see old friend Wisconsin taking on Texas A&M in the first match on Friday. The Badgers hit .350 and swept the Aggies when they faced each other in the UW Field House back on Sept. 21.
Wisconsin swept Fairfield in the first round and beat No. 7 seed Georgia Tech 3-1 in the second. The Badgers are healthier now than when the Huskers last saw them with libero Lola Schumacher and defensive specialist Gulce Guctekin back in the lineup, and they’re a formidable foe with back-to-back Big Ten Player of the Year Sarah Franklin (4.48 kills per set) leading the way.
Texas A&M beat Colorado State 3-1 in the first round and upset No. 3 seed Arizona State in the second. Outside hitter Logan Lednicky leads the A&M attack at 4.47 kills per set on .304 hitting while middle blocker Ifenna Cos-Okpalla is 14th in the country at 1.44 blocks per set.
The Aggies also have a Nebraska native on their roster in redshirt sophomore middle blocker Ital Lopuyo, an Omaha Central alumna. She’s played in 48 sets this season with 40 kills and 21 blocks.
The Badgers and Aggies will get the festivities started at the Devaney Center at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN2. The Huskers and Flyers will begin 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first match.
The winners will advance to face each other in the regional final on Sunday at 2 p.m. CT on ABC. Courtney Lyle, Holly McPeak, Katie George and Madison Fitzpatrick will be on the call for the TV broadcasts in Lincoln.
