This week marks the first of three straight weeks of back-to-back weekend matches for the No. 2 Nebraska volleyball team.
Outside of a couple early-season tournaments, Nebraska’s matches have been fairly spread out this season. The absence of mid-week matches has allowed the Huskers to put together a handful of solid training blocks for the first time this year, but playing on two straight days also brings its own set of challenge as they prepare for two different opponents throughout the week.
“It’s making that mental switch sometimes, because teams play so differently, and being able to switch from ‘OK, maybe we scouted this team three days ago, how do we go back to that and what we trained and what we worked on?’” Merritt Beason said. “Just because teams are very different. Especially in the Big Ten there’s a big variety of style of play and things like that; I would say that’s really challenging. And then also, obviously, the recovery aspect of it, of ‘OK, you might go five sets that night, and then you have to wake up and play at 2:30 game the next day,’ and the body and physical aspect of it for sure.”
The Huskers (14-1, 4-0 Big Ten) will ride an 11-match winning streak into Friday’s showdown against No. 10 Purdue, and they’ve dropped just three sets during that streak — two against Creighton (now ranked No. 6) and one against UCLA that saw the Huskers surrender a 10-0 run late after building up a big lead.
“They’ve been doing a great job,” Coach John Cook said. “We learned some lessons at SMU, UCLA. We just don’t want to go back to there where we’re giving up runs like that. So they’re taking a lot of pride in we’re not going to give up more than a one- or two-point run and we’re trying to get runs. So that’s a lot of what volleyball is about, who can get a couple runs. And I just think they’re very determined. We learned some hard lessons, and it’s no fun when you play like that. It just feels helpless.
“And so I think those have been some great learning experiences for us. And then when it gets tough, we kind of know and we’re working on how to get out of it, and people stepping up.”
A big part of Nebraska’s recent dominance has been the Huskers’ effectiveness from the service line. Over their past seven matches, the Nebraska volleyball team has served up 33 aces while erring just 26 times. Per VolleyDork.com’s Chad Gordon, Nebraska ranks as the fifth-best serving team in the country through six weeks. Individually, Lindsay Krause ranks as one of the best servers in the country.
“They’ve been really locked in serving and we’re stressing teams, we’re mixing up tempos, we’re hitting locations,” Cook said. “Serving’s night to night, day to day, minute to minute, but we’ve challenged them to become a better serving team, and I think they’ve embraced that. But I’m sure every coach is saying the same thing, we need to be a better serving team. I just see a sense of pride. When they go back there to serve, there’s a sense of pride, it’s not like, ‘Oh, I hope we get it in.’ ‘I’m going to go score a point for our team’ — I just feel like that’s our mindset right now.”
Cook said the team has implemented new methods in practice based on suggestions from assistant coach Jordan Larson, who picked up some things from her time with the USA Volleyball program.
“We’re doing some things a little bit differently than what we’ve always done, so we’ve got to give Jordan some credit for that, because I think it’s really paid off,” Cook said. “Just ways of holding them accountable more and they hold each other accountable. It’s nothing you guys would see watching practice, it’s just they’re back there talking, kind of keeping track.”
Nebraska is also the best passing team in the country, according to Gordon. During that same seven-match span, the Huskers have allowed just seven aces while their opponents have racked up 70 errors attempting to crack Nebraska’s tough serve receive group. Both Olivia Mauch and Lexi Rodriguez rank in the top 15 nationally for serve receive, with the freshman ranking second in Gordon’s metrics.
That passing will be put to the test on Friday against the No. 10 Boilermakers (12-3, 3-1), who rank 15th nationally in serving effectiveness. In Purdue’s five-set win over Minnesota on Sept. 28, middle blocker Raven Colvin recorded seven aces. The 6-foot-1 All-Big Ten middle blocker is also averaging 2.68 kills per set on .439 hitting and 1.74 blocks per set.
“It seems like she’s been there for about eight, nine years; I feel like she’s been there forever,” Cook said. “She’s an elite attacker and she’s an elite blocker. She’s done a great job and she’s really improved every year that she’s been there, and she’s playing at a really high level … She just does it more than other players. That’s what separates these guys, who can do it the longest and the most and most consistent. She’s been very consistent.”
As good as Colvin is, however, the focus of the Purdue offense is outside hitters Eva Hudson and Chloe Chicoine as they’ve each taken more than 500 swings this season (Harper Murray leads Nebraska with 435, for comparison’s sake). Hudson, a junior, is averaging 4.09 kills per set on .264 hitting while Chicoine, a sophomore, is at 3.28 per set on .205 hitting. As a right-side hitter who will primarily line up across the net from the left-side attackers, Beason said she’s looking forward to the challenge of throwing up a block against them.
“It’s exciting in that area,” Beason said. “But, obviously they’re a great team, and those two girls are studs of athletes and they’re great volleyball players, and so it’s going to be challenging, but it also allows us to adjust our defense in a way that hopefully will match them up really, really well. So I’m excited. I think the game plan that we have going into it is going to work really well, or at least if we execute and do what we’re supposed to do, it’ll be really good, and it’ll give us a really nice position and it’ll make it a really good matchup.
“But like I said, they’re great volleyball players, and they can take over a match at any point in time, and we’ve seen that over and over, and so you have to give a lot of credit to them as well, because they are great volleyball players holding a very, very big role for their team and a big load. So we have to make sure that we come ready, because we know that they’re going to.”
First serve at the Devaney Center on Friday is set for 7:30 p.m. CT on Big Ten Network with Larry Punteney and Lauren Stivrins on the call.
On Saturday, Nebraska will welcome Rutgers (5-10, 0-4) to the Devaney Center for a 7 p.m. start time. That match will be available on Big Ten Plus.
