“Whew. That was not a pretty match.”
That was Coach John Cook’s initial reaction on the radio after his second-ranked Nebraska team pulled out a four-set win at Michigan State Friday night.
Despite the ugly start to the mach, Nebraska eventually settled in to dominate the last two sets, dispatching the Spartans 25-23, 16-25, 25-15, 25-11 to improve to 14-0 including 5-0 in Big Ten play. Nebraska hit .168 while Michigan State hit .088 in front of a record crowd at the Breslin Center.
“It was an ugly match, lot of errors on both sides,” Cook said. “I thought they played really well the first two games and they were playing hard and did some really nice things. They run people all over and I think for a while there it works a little bit, kind of like guerrilla warfare, and then eventually they get out of whack and they’re hitting balls out, into the net and they just had no rhythm offensively.
“Congratulations to them, they had a record crowd tonight, almost 9,000, so that’s awesome. I think it rattled us a little bit. We had a great practice last night and we just were completely out of it today. You’ve got to continue to learn how to compete and start from point one on the road.”
With so many players struggling, Cook looked for answers on his bench in the first couple of sets as he turned to Ally Batenhorst, Maggie Mendelson and Maisie Boesiger at one point or another, but he eventually went back to the starters to finish the match.
Harper Murray led the attack with 12 kills, though she hit just .176 and had five service errors. Merritt Beason added nine kills on .128 hitting. Lindsay Krause bounced back from an early benching to lead Nebraska’s attackers in efficiency, recording nine kills on .381 hitting plus two aces as Cook called her number to serve in sets three and four.
Bergen Reilly finished with 29 assists while Lexi Rodriguez led the defense with 13 digs plus five assists and two aces.
The teams recorded 15 service errors apiece as the Huskers’ issues from the previous weekend persisted, though Nebraska did manage a season-high 10 aces, six more than the Spartans.
“There’s a lot of wind going down there and and you can see both sides had trouble passing tonight,” Cook said. “We had 10 aces, they had four; I thought we hung in there a little bit better, but still lots of errors. We hit some balls and it’s just like they just took off. I was like ‘that’s a great serve,’ in our gym would be a great serve, and then all of a sudden it’s like the wind carries it and it floats 10 feet out.”
Reilly sent her serve long on the first point of the match, setting the tone for what proved to be a sloppy first set for Nebraska. The Spartans used a 4-0 run to take the lead midway through the set and extended the advantage to five at 20-15 as Nebraska struggled to terminate.
“We were tipping every ball, we weren’t passing, we were missing serves, Bergen was setting everything really high,” Cook said about the start. “It was just ugly. I haven’t seen us play that badly ever this year. We had a great practice last night a really good serve and pass today. I talked to them all day about being focused tonight and focusing on our side of the net and I don’t know if they were distracted with everything going on.”
The Huskers finally started to find the floor with their swings late in the set, cutting the deficit to one then closing the frame with a 4-0 run to steal a deuce game. The Cornhuskers closed the set on a 10-3 run, recording half of their 12 kills during that spurt.
Nebraska hit .154 and held Michigan State to .077, though the Huskers also recorded five service errors. Beason and Murray got going late to combine for nine kills.
The Huskers’ issues returned in set two as Michigan State used a 4-1 run to break a 5-5 tie early then extended the lead to six at 13-7 with a 4-0 run. Nebraska scored three straight to get back into it, but Michigan State won six of the next seven rallies to extend the lead to eight and this time Nebraska couldn’t find any late magic.
The lead hit 10 points a couple of times before Michigan State secured the nine-point set win. The Huskers hit minus-.103 with just six kills while the Spartans hit .320.
Whatever Cook had to say during the intermission — he said after the match that he forgot — seemed to have worked as Nebraska opened the third set with a 5-0 run including three straight kills from Murray and an ace from Reilly. The Huskers continued to roll from there, dominating from start to finish as Nebraska played much of the set with a double-digit lead.
Nebraska hit .290 behind five kills from Murray and held Michigan State to six kills and .067 hitting.
Nebraska carried its momentum into the fourth set, racing out to an 11-3 lead after back-to-back aces from Krause. Michigan State’s first kill off the set didn’t come until the 18th rally with Nebraska leading 13-4, and it didn’t get much better from there for the Spartans as Nebraska cruised to victory.
Nebraska hit .500 in game four but only needed eight kills thanks to four aces, eight Spartan attack errors and five State service errors.
“A win’s a win, and we made some adjustments and they worked through it,” Cook said. “So we’re building that up a little bit that we can not play great and still find a way to win.”
The road swing continues on Saturday as the Huskers take on Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines secured their first Big Ten win of the year on Friday, topping Northwestern in four sets.
