No. 5 Nebraska put an exclamation point on its nonconference slate with a 3-0 win at No. 4 Louisville on Sunday afternoon.
The Huskers swept the Cardinals 25-16, 25-17, 25-20 in front of a Louisville program record 14,126 fans at the KFC Yum! Center. The win is Nebraska’s second top-five victory in a five-day span following Wednesday’s sweep over No. 2 Stanford.
Sunday was the first regular season college volleyball match on ABC, and it went much better for the Huskers than their previous appearance on the network (the 2023 National Championship). Nebraska finishes nonconference play 10-1 with five wins over top-15 teams.
“First of all, great crowd today for a Sunday 12:30 start,” Coach John Cook said. “This is a historic day, being on ABC, so we’re honored to be a part of that, and Louisville did a great job of packing this arena and setting the tone for the Final Four. We’re just really happy to be a part of this. I thought our team came ready to play today and we played just a really solid three games. We had a couple little bumps here and there, but we just pulled ourselves right out of it. We made a lot of progress this week as a team in how we want to play and our mindset going into these matches, so great job by our players.”
Nebraska dominated the serve and pass game and played clean offensive volleyball to hand the Cardinals their second loss of the season.
The Cornhuskers served up seven aces, including four from Lindsay Krause, while blanking the Cardinals, and both teams recorded seven service errors. Nebraska hit .305 and held Louisville to .133 as the Huskers finished with seven attack errors in the match while Louisville misfired 25 times.
“Our block and defense was really good,” Cook said. “I thought our serving really put pressure on them. They struggled early passing. And when you’re running a 6-2 and you’re trying to run all these double quicks and everything, if you don’t pass, there goes your offense; it becomes very predictable. And I just thought we did a really nice job staying with our game plan and putting pressure on them.”
Harper Murray led the offense with 11 kills on .290 hitting, five digs and an ace. Merritt Beason added nine kills on .364 hitting, four blocks and an ace. Bergen Reilly had 25 assists, six digs, four kills and two blocks. Lexi Rodriguez paced the defense with eight digs.
Tough Husker serving and sloppy play from the Cardinals was the story of the day. The Huskers used a 4-0 run to take the lead early in the first set then ripped off seven straight with Krause at the service line to blow the game open. Louisville made a small run late, but Krause closed out the set with a kill.
Nebraska hit .320 but only needed nine kills as Louisville hit .105 with 10 attack errors and three service errors. The Huskers served up three aces on their end.
“We had so much grit, and it’s an away game so you have to come in and you want to take it, and that’s exactly what we did,” Murray told ABC after the match. “So I’m really proud of us.”
Nebraska continued to bring the heat in set two with three straight aces from Krause during a 5-0 run.
“We see it every day in practice,” Rodriguez said of Krause’s serving run. “She’s got a gnarly serve. It shows a lot about her, that she was able to go back there and hit it three times. That’s pretty impressive.”
Krause finally missed a serve to give Louisville a point, but the Huskers answered with a 6-0 run including an ace from Rodriguez to take a 12-3 lead. Nebraska continued to roll, extending the lead to 10 midway through the set before cruising into the intermission with a 2-0 lead.
Nebraska hit .324 and held Louisville to .172. After a slow start, Beason came alive in game two with four kills on seven errorless swings while the Huskers added four more aces to their total.
Through two sets, Nebraska recorded just two attack errors, both on Louisville blocks. The Cardinals had 17 errors.
“If you’re able to be aggressive [serving] and get them off the net, it kind of makes it easier for our block and D to get in the right positions,” Rodriguez said. “It gives us more time … allowing us to kind of form around what’s happening, and we get to dictate it a little bit more where when they’re in system, it becomes a little bit harder.”
Louisville cleaned up its play a bit out of the locker room, using a 5-2 spurt to take a 10-7 lead in game three. However, the Huskers rallied to tie it up at 11-11 then used a 4-0 run to take a 15-12 lead into the media timeout. Louisville won four of the next five rallies to knot it up once again, but Nebraska stretched it back out with a 4-0 run then finished it off from there. Murray delivered her fifth kill of the set on match point.
Nebraska hit .278 in the third and held Louisville to .132.
“We’re kind of used to some of those bigger crowds, but I think it’s cool that usually it’s full of Husker fans, and it’s awesome to see that the sport is just continuing to grow, and that doesn’t matter where we’re playing, there are going to be supporters and people who are invested in women’s volleyball,” Rodriguez said. “At the end of the day, I think that’s all what we all love to see, so I’m just excited for more of these records to happen this year all throughout the country.”
With the nonconference slate complete, Nebraska will have time during the week to hit the practice court and fine-tune some things before opening Big Ten play at home next weekend.
