For the first time since 2013, Nebraska volleyball emerged from the dungeon that is the UW Field House in Madison victorious.
The No. 2 Cornhuskers swept No. 7 Wisconsin 25-21, 25-22, 25-19 on Friday, snapping the Badgers’ nine-match winning streak.
“I thought our team was really focused, really disciplined tonight,” Coach John Cook said on the Huskers Radio Network. “They stayed with the game plan. Even when Wisconsin made runs, we didn’t panic. So that was a heck of an effort by our team. Our preparation, Jaylen’s game plan and the boys, they had us really well prepared for stopping them. We held them to the lowest hitting percentage in eight years, I think. Great job by our whole team, staff, everybody. It was just a total team effort.”
Cook said he played a clip from the movie “Gladiator” for the team before the match, and the message from it seemed to sink in based on their performance.
“I showed them that clip, because whatever came out tonight, we had to stick together,’ Cook said. “I told them, ‘Only look at us; don’t look at anything else. And they did a great job with that.”
Nebraska (21-1, 11-0 Big Ten) hit .202 against the top defense in the Big Ten and held the Badgers (15-5, 9-2) to .096, more than 200 points below their conference-leading season percentage. Wisconsin had only failed to hit .200 four times all season, and no team had held the Badgers below .100 before Friday. The Huskers out-blocked the second-best blocking team in the country, 10 to nine, with Rebekah Allick in on seven of the stuffs.
“Our middles did a great job of getting there tonight, and our pin blockers — Harper [Murray] did an awesome job on Anna [Smrek] and got a couple stuffs,” Cook said. “Taylor [Landfair] came in and got a couple big-time stuffs as well. So that takes discipline. This is a hard place to play, and I don’t know how loud it is up here, but it was really loud down there tonight. It’s hard to sometimes stay focused when it’s like that, but they did an awesome job with it.”
Landfair led the Huskers with 13 kills while Merritt Beason added 11 kills on .391 hitting. Bergen Reilly dished out 32 assists while Lexi Rodriguez led the defensive effort with a match-high 12 digs and two aces.
Reigning National Player of the Year Sarah Franklin posted a match-high 16 kills but hit just .184. The 6-foot-9 Smrek hit minus-.084 with 10 errors while middles Devyn Robinson, Carter Booth and CC Crawford combined for four kills and five errors.
Wisconsin had won 25 straight matches at home. Nebraska’s first loss of the 2023 season came at the UW Field House in a sweep, part of an eight-match Husker losing streak in Madison. Five of those losses were sweeps and only one went the distance. Beason said the Huskers went into Friday night confident and wanting to flip the narrative.
“This is a hard place to play,” Cook said. “Even Jordan [Larson] said it’s a hard gym, she said it’s a hard gym to play in, and it is. It’s just the way it’s designed, and it’s different. I’m just really proud of our team, how they stayed with it, and we stayed in the fight point-by-point. That’s what we’ve got to take away from it.”
Wisconsin won three of the first four rallies of the night, but the Huskers settled in quickly to tie it up at 4-all. Eight more ties and three lead changes followed before Nebraska took control midway through with a 3-0 run for an 18-15 lead. The Huskers pushed the lead to four, then to five. Wisconsin saved a pair of set points late, but Beason closed it out with a laser out of the back row.
The Cornhuskers hit .250 with a balanced attack, but it was their defense that made the difference. They recorded six blocks — including four on Franklin — and held the Badgers to .108. Rodriguez and Kennedi Orr both recorded aces as well.
“I think our blocking was huge this match,” Beason told Big Ten Network. “We knew they have really good attackers, and maybe we weren’t getting stuff blocks, but we were getting a lot of positive touches and then converting them, and we knew that that was going to be the difference in this game.”
The second set saw some wild swings as Nebraska used a 4-0 run to build a five-point lead in the first half of the set. It didn’t last long, however, as the Huskers got stuck in a rut during a 9-1 run that put the Badgers in front 17-14. Four of those points came on Wisconsin blocks.
Landfair finally got the Huskers back on track with back-to-back kills, trimming the lead to one. Wisconsin answered with two straight points, but the Huskers won eight of the next 10 rallies including two kills apiece from Landfair and Beason and an ace from Olivia Mauch to earn set point.
Wisconsin got a kill from Booth, but Reilly went back to Beason on the next point and she delivered with a kill through the block. Nebraska hit .171 and held Wisconsin to .061. Beason put seven kills on nine swings in the set.
“I think just coming out from the jump was huge, but also understanding they’re going to go on runs, they’re going to make big plays,” Beason said. “I don’t know, they probably had four five-point runs, but how are we going to respond in that moment? We’ve been working a lot on that this year, like, ‘OK, when we’re getting tested and it’s a three-, four-point run, how are we going to cut it off and then get our momentum back?’ So I think that was huge for us.”
The Huskers carried their momentum into the third set, opening with another ace from Mauch and building a 7-2 lead early. However, Wisconsin turned the tables by winning eight of the next 10 rallies to surge ahead.
Five ties followed before the Huskers put together a 4-0 run to take an 18-15 advantage. The Badgers trimmed the lead to one twice, but Nebraska closed out the match with a 5-0 run featuring Mauch at the service line. The freshman finished with six digs and two aces.
“When I was waiting to do TV there, I grabbed her and said ‘Livvy, you’re such a stud,’” Cook said. “She passed great, she served great … Almost every game she blew it open for us, and then she made some great digs. She had a heck of a night.”
The Husker hit .189 and held the Badgers to .106. Landfair finished strong with five kills on 11 swings to lead the Huskers on the day. She looked tentative early as the Badgers stuffed two of her first three swings on off-speed shots, but she eventually let it rip.
“She started off really tough,” Cook said. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ But she did exactly what she was supposed to do, she stayed with it, she got dug a few times, but she got some big kills when it really mattered. In game three, they kept moving in on her. We told her, ‘hit line, hit line,’ and she just tattooed that ball down the line. But that was fun to see that because she’s been working really hard, and she’s been getting pushed in practice a lot.”
Nebraska will get a day to enjoy the win before locking back in to close out the weekend at Northwestern on Sunday. The Wildcats fell 3-1 to Illinois on Friday.
First serve at Welsh-Ryan Arena is set for noon CT on Big Ten Plus.
