Not the BCS - But #1 vs #2 Nonetheless In the Championship Game

The celebration is on! (Source: Husker Extra)

So it's not football, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that Nebraska isn't head over heals in love with the sport of volleyball. At tonight's match against UCLA, the announcement was made that a new attendance record was set for women's college volleyball. The new record is 17,013, breaking the old record set previously in Nebraska.

Nebraska will face the Stanford Cardinal, who swept Washington tonight with amazing ease, 30-12, 30-25, and 30-15. One need not look much further than Washington's hitting percentage in these games (-.118, .135, and -.033) to determine what happened. Washington was the defending National Champion after sweeping Nebraska in the championship game last year. You can't feel too bad for them given that they returned to the Final Four again this year.

For the second straight year, Nebraska advances to the title game ranked number one, facing a Pac-10 foe ranked #2. I don't know what the rest of you will be doing Saturday night, but me and mine will be glued to our TV set, my in-laws at the game, hoping as much as we would want a Nebraska football title (I've probably blasphemed with that statement) that these young women can pull off a great finish to a truly remarkable season.

This Nebraska team has played as well as anyone could have expected throughout this season. They lost last year's NCAA Player of the Year, Christina Houghtelling, before the season. They replaced her with the Big 12 newcomer of the year in Rachel Holloway, changed their offense from a 6-2 to a 5-1, lost one match throughout the entire season and won a regional outside the state of Nebraska to advance to the Final Four for the first time after coming back from a 0-2 deficit against Minnesota.

This Nebraska volleyball team is putting on one helluva show right now, and I hope that all the Husker fans out there will be tuning in Saturday night.