No. 2 Nebraska won its third match in five days on Saturday night, taking down TCU 3-1 to finish 2-0 in the Ameritas Players Challenge.
The Huskers beat the Horned Frogs 25-15, 25-23, 23-25, 25-13 at the Devaney Center, though Nebraska hit a season-low .213 and allowed the Horned Frogs to hit .168, a higher percentage than the Huskers allowed to a top-10 team in Kentucky.
“I thought TCU did a nice job of creating some stress with tips and roll shots and different things, and we didn’t handle it very well,” Coach John Cook said. “We kind of lost our minds there for a while, made a ton of errors, but they bounced back in game four and I thought, probably, TCU got worn down, so that was nice to see that. We won a close game two, and it was disappointing to lose game three. I thought we had plenty of chances to win that and really didn’t take advantage of it and we weren’t the aggressors. So hopefully we’re going to learn from that.”
One area in which Nebraska excelled was serve receive as the Huskers did not surrender an ace all night. The Horned Frogs recorded 11 aces in a 3-1 win over Oklahoma at the Devaney Center on Friday afternoon, seven of which came from All-American outside hitter Melanie Parra. The Frogs misfired 13 times from the line while Nebraska successfully passed the other 64 TCU serves.
“We didn’t get aced tonight,” Cook said. “I think Parra had seven aces last night. Lexi Rodriguez deserves extra meal money tonight; I put her in the middle of the court to pass her, and she did a fantastic job. She proved why she’s the best libero in the country and handled that serve really, really well.”
Sophomore Laney Choboy also played a big part in Nebraska’s serve receive, leading the Huskers in receptions with 17 of them. She also added seven digs and two assists to her line while subbing for Harper Murray in the first two sets and for Merritt Beason in the last two.
“We talked a lot about her serve,” Choboy said of Parra. “We scouted it a lot and we worked on it. We have the boys that can serve that to us every day, so we work on it. We were pretty focused on passing her ball … We just focus on serve receive a lot, and it’s a big part of our game, serving and passing. So I think coming out, we were super dialed in, and to let up zero aces is a huge accomplishment.”
Murray led the Nebraska attack, becoming the fourth different Husker through three matches to lead the team in kills. After one kill in the first, she exploded in the last three sets to finish with a match-high 20 on .302 hitting. She added six digs and three blocks (two solo) plus her first ace of the season.
“I thought Harper came alive tonight,” Cook said. “She’s still got some work to do, but I was really impressed with her passing tonight. She’s been working really hard on that. She was solid, and she got some big kills when we needed them and started moving around when we were having a hard time killing the ball.”
Bergen Reilly recorded her third straight double-double with 43 assists, 14 digs, three kills, two blocks and an ace. Lexi Rodriguez led the defensive effort with a match-high 18 digs, four assists and one ace. Andi Jackson chipped in eight kills on .467 hitting and four blocks. The Huskers racked up 12 blocks and nine aces as a team.
The first set was a grind early for both teams, but Nebraska settled in midway through and pulled away. The Huskers closed the game on an 11-3 run to secure the double-digit victory, holding TCU to minus-.033 hitting thanks in part to six blocks.
Neither team managed to pull away in the second set, a game that featured 12 ties and six lead changes. The Huskers spent plenty of time playing from behind thanks to an error-prone attack. However, trailing 22-20 late, Nebraska put together a 5-1 finishing run including kills from Rebekah Allick, Lindsay Krause and Beason plus a pair of TCU miscues. Nebraska pulled out a win despite hitting .140 with 10 attack errors.
Nothing came easy for Nebraska, who continued to trail for much of the third set until Murray took over. She gave the Huskers their first lead of the game at 17-16 on a back-row swing that went through four sets of Horned Frog hands.
TCU refused to go away, however. Five more ties and three lead changes followed to put the Horned Frogs back in front. After the hot start to the set, Murray erred three times down the stretch as TCU pulled out a two-point win to extend the match. Murray had seven kills on her first 11 attacks before misfiring on three of her last four.
“What hurt us was there were 19 errors in games two and three,” Cook said. “You’re going to have a really hard time winning making that many errors, and that’s very uncharacteristic for us. I don’t know what the deal was tonight. It was our third match in how many days? So I don’t know if that’s it. It was a long day, sitting around, waiting to play tonight, but that’s very uncharacteristic for us and so we’ve got to learn from that. But serving and our defense we still did some nice things.”
Murray got back into a groove in the fourth, however, notching five of Nebraska’s first seven kills as the Huskers quickly built up a double-digit lead before cruising to the finish. Reilly closed out the night with an ace.
Nebraska’s attack and block both came alive again in the fourth with a .417 hitting percentage and five stuffs.
Up next for Nebraska is another Tuesday road trip as the Huskers will travel to SMU.
