When No. 2 Nebraska plays on back-to-back days, Coach John Cook and his staff typically prepare the team for the second match first then circle back to the first opponent to have it fresh in the players’ minds.
This week, however, Nebraska has a midweek match, which means there’s no looking ahead — even if the No. 1 team in the country in Wisconsin awaits on Saturday.
“We’re focused on Northwestern right now,” Cook said on Tuesday. “They’re good and we went five there last year, so they definitely have our attention. They probably have a player that right now, if we had a vote for Big Ten player that year, she’d probably get it, their outside hitter. So we’ve got our hands full right now. We’re not worried about what’s happening this weekend.”
Nebraska (17-0, 8-0 Big Ten) has played Friday-Saturday or Friday-Sunday four weeks in a row. Northwestern on Wednesday will be the Huskers’ first mid-week opponent since conference play began, which calls for a change in the team’s practice schedule.
“I think we’ve played almost every night of the week now except for Monday, so for us, it’s no big deal,” Cook said. “The problem is is how do you train hard all week but you’ve got a match on Wednesday and a match on Saturday? You’ve got to have recovery in there, you’ve got to try to train hard, you can’t over train them. So that’s the balance. When you play Friday-Saturday, you have a couple of days in the beginning of the week that you can go hard, just like football does. They go hard today and tomorrow and then they start backing off and kind of do the same thing. But when you play Wednesday-Saturday, it’s a different game.”
Northwestern is 9-9 and 3-5 in the Big Ten, though the Wildcats opened conference play with 3-0 losses to two of the top three teams in the league in Wisconsin and Penn State and a five-set loss to Michigan State. Since then, the Wildcats have won three of five with five-set victories over Purdue and Michigan State and a four-set win over Maryland. They nearly knocked off Minnesota on Sunday, falling in five in Minneapolis.
“I think the two surprise teams right now are Northwestern and Indiana in the Big Ten,” Cook said. “Northwestern, their best player is at Wisconsin now and their other best player is at UCLA. So he’s done a great job of reloading that team. So that’s our focus. We’re not getting caught up in anything else; that’s how we roll.”
Northwestern went 18-14 overall including 7-13 in Big Ten play while dealing with injury issues in 2022, then lost star outside hitter Temi Thomas-Ailera and top blocker Desiree Becker to the portal. Despite the losses, Coach Shane Davis has the Wildcats competing at a high level this season.
“He’s a really good coach,” Cook said. “They have a really good system they run. You can tell they’re very well trained, and and that’s a sign of a good program when you can just get some new players in there and they’re going like this this season. It may have been a little rough starting out, but they got it going. They have a great setter. So he’s a good coach and he’s won two national championships coaching men at Loyola; who has done that? So, much respect for them and and they’re very good team and they’ve got a player that teams have had a really hard time stopping.”
That player is Julia Sangiacomo, a 6-foot-5 graduate transfer from Santa Clara who opted to play her fifth season in Evanston. She’s fourth in the Big Ten in kills at 4.11 per set on .244 hitting. In Big Ten matches only, she’s third at 4.59 per set on .252 hitting.
Whereas Northwestern relies heavily upon one hitter, all three of Nebraska’s primary pin-hitters have been almost equally effective through 17 matches. Merritt Beason (3.56 kills per set) and Harper Murray (3.41 kills per set) are both hitting .280, while Lindsay Krause (2.5 kills per set) is hitting .285 after a strong return from injury.
“It’s huge because like I said all year, it makes us a really hard team to defend when you’ve got five hitters that can kill the ball,” Cook said. “That was one of our goals going in: this year we have to kill more balls, and we are. So it’s huge.”
While Nebraska is operating at a high level offensively, the strength of the team is still its defense as the Huskers continue to lead the country in opponent hitting percentage at .122. On Monday, that defensive prowess resulted in the first Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honor for a Husker this season as the league recognized Lexi Rodriguez.
The junior captain averaged 4.86 digs per set while helping Nebraska hold Michigan State and Penn State to a .106 hitting percentage. Rodriguez had 16 digs and Michigan State hit .097 in a four-set Husker win Friday. In the sweep over the Nittany Lions — who rose two spots to No. 11 in the latest AVCA Coaches Poll despite the loss — on Saturday, Rodriguez recorded 18 digs (including 12 in the first set) and helped hold a high-powered Penn State attack to .117 hitting.
The Big Ten has named 33 weekly award recipients so far this season, and 10 of them have been Nebraska players. Five different Huskers have received awards and Nebraska has had at least one winner in all four categories.
The Cornhuskers are nearing the halfway mark of the Big Ten schedule and have passed every test they’ve faced thus far, the latest being a top-15 team in Penn State on Sunday. However, Cook is still looking for more, particularly when the team ventures away from the Devaney Center.
“I think the non-conference is kind of like the honeymoon phase,” Cook said. “It’s fun, it’s exciting, you’re playing all these different teams now. Now we’re in the grind. So it’s week five and every match is a really tough match. There are rivalries, there are emotions, there are players that have been playing against each other. There are just a lot of more dynamics in the Big Ten and as you can see … on any given night, anybody can win. So you’ve got to have the mindset of playing well.
“I challenged our team yesterday, we’ve got to go on the road and try to play a really solid match. We haven’t really done that yet. We’ve played some really good volleyball and we got some wins, but I don’t think we’ve played a really solid match. We’ve been high-error in some places, we’ve had games we’ve gotten blown out in. So that’s our challenge is can we go have a really solid effort on the road.”
First serve at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Wednesday is set for 7 p.m. CT on Big Ten Plus and the Huskers Radio Network.
