No. 2 Nebraska handed No. 13 Penn State its first conference loss in impressive fashion on Saturday night, sweeping the Nittany Lions in front of a fired up Devaney Center crowd.
It looked like the Huskers might be in for a long night as Penn State raced out to a big lead early in the second set, but the Huskers right the ship and went on to complete the sweep 25-22, 25-22, 25-19.
“I thought it was an electric night,” Coach John Cook said. “My ears are ringing; it was very loud in there tonight. Our fans did great and they got a great show tonight. It was great volleyball. We made a great comeback in game two and it was a pretty good effort on our part. We really hung in there even though we struggled at times with missing serves and passing, but I thought we we really weathered the storms and found a way to play great, especially at the end of games.”
Nebraska (17-0, 8-0 Big Ten) hit .269 as Merritt Beason led the way with 13 kills on .333 hitting. Lindsay Krause matched Beason with 13 kills on .300 hitting and two aces. Harper Murray added 10 kills on .273 hitting and eight digs.
Bergen Reilly dished out 33 assists with nine digs. Lexi Rodriguez posted a match-high 18 digs while Andi Jackson led the blocking effort with five stuffs.
Nebraska held Penn State (13-4, 7-1) to .117 hitting. Star outside hitter Jess Mruzik, a Michigan transfer, led the Nittany Lions with 12 kills, but she also committed eight errors as Nebraska held her to .073 hitting. She took 55 of her team’s 111 swings.
Nebraska raced out to a 5-0 lead including a pair of Krause kills, one of which ended a rally that lasted nearly a minute. The Huskers extended their lead to 9-3 as Krause continued to swing away, terminating on six of her first 10 swings.
The lead reached seven before Penn State cut into it with a couple of 4-0 runs, drawing to within two. That’s as close as the Nittany Lions got, however, as Nebraska held on to the lead and went on to win, capitalizing on their third set point opportunity with another marathon rally win.
“Before the match, we just talked a lot about taking in the environment of being here at Bob, just like we do before every home game, and we knew it was going to be a top-15 match, so we had to have a lot of energy coming in …” Krause said. “We did a really good job of just using our energy and playing how we play to start off that match and really get them stuck down in a hole very early on.”
Krause led Nebraska with eight kills on .389 hitting while Beason added seven on .438 hitting. Nebraska hit .283 as a team with 15 assists from Reilly and held Penn State to .159 as Rodriguez recorded 12 digs.
Penn State turned the tables in set two, winning eight of the first nine rallies to build a big lead. The Huskers missed on their first four serves before Krause stepped to the line and served back-to-back aces to spark the comeback. The Huskers whittled away at the lead until Reilly finally erased it entirely with a joust kill, trying it up at 18-18.
“We really talked about in that huddle and throughout those few timeouts that we don’t need to go on one long eight-point run; we need to go on two-point runs, three-point runs,” Krause said. “Every single time a server goes back we need to string a few points together and chip away one by one and don’t let them go on any more runs after that … So that was big for us and just making sure everybody did their job well.”
Six straight sideouts followed before Krause gave Nebraska its first lead since 1-0 with a kill that made it 22-21. The Huskers added to the lead with back-to-back double-blocks from Beason and Jackson to earn set point. Nebraska completed the comeback two plays later with another Beason kill.
Nebraska hit .226 behind four kills apiece from Beason and Murray. Penn State hit .154.
“We were down like that against Michigan State and got beat 25-16,” Cook said. “We were down pretty far and found a way to get back and get it close and then play great at the end of game two. We got the crowd into it and made plays, so that that was a big step for us. We’ve had other comebacks, but against a team like Penn State, that’s a really great comeback.”
Nebraska got off to a better start in set three, winning three of the first four rallies with kills by Murray and Bekka Allick and a block by Jackson and Krause. The Husker block came alive as Nebraska recorded two more stuffs while extending the lead out to five at 12-7 and the Huskers continued to control the action the rest of the way.
Penn State made a late push, using a 4-0 run to cut the deficit in half, but an errant attack ended the run then Krause closed it out with a kill.
Murray bounced back from a brief trip to the bench in set two to lead the offense with four kills in the third as Nebraska hit .290 and held Penn State to .049.
“She just started playing,” Cook said about Murray. “She got more aggressive, she started passing better, and she had some huge kills, especially in game three. Those are some tough plays and she found a way to go high off the block; that is a really hard thing to do. So she she stepped up and I kept telling her ‘You’re going to have to make a couple plays here for us to win this,’ and I like how she responded.”
After a successful weekend home stand, Nebraska will hit the road again for its first Big Ten midweek match as the Huskers will visit Northwestern on Wednesday night.
