Nebraska 3 Indiana 1 - 23-25, 25-18, 25-22, 25-16
Missed serves and hitting errors led to a set one loss for the Huskers. The Hoosiers earned some of their points, but Nebraska gifted them a great deal. NU hit .200 while IU hit .289 in the first set. Coach Cook talked about the travel to Indiana and how the mindset of the team was impacted.
“Our routine was off. We got it late because our plane had mechanical errors, we got a practice in late”. That was yesterday, a day after Nebraska beat Maryland at home. Coach Cook assessed the team and said “we aren’t to the place where they can keep their focus when something gets in the way of their routine”.
Nebraska has depth on the bench and used it to find the win this afternoon. Indiana's middle hitter Kaley Rammelsburg was unstoppable in set one. In order to get a bigger block in front of her, Coach subbed Callie Schwarzenbach in for Kayla Caffey. This sub had little to no impact so Caffey started three again.
Madi Kubik made a great deal of hitting errors through the match. Part way through the second set Coach subbed Ally Batenhorst in for Kubik. Batenhorst played all six rotations the first time around but after that Kubik came in for the backrow rotations.
Coach talked about the freshman outside hitter that we haven’t seen for a few matches. “Batenhorst is a creative attacker. She moves it all over the place” Batenhorst played well today with 11 kills on 24 swings hitting .333.
Also in the 11 kill category today was Lexi Sun (11 kills, .310 hitting percentage) and Lindsay Krause (11 kills, .125 hitting percentage, 7 errors). Lauren Stivrins had 10 kills and hit .391. Her slide was great today.
Our eyes look forward to a match against Penn State at home on Friday. Nebraska will be sharp after a week of practice and preparing. Coach Cook feels like the way the team approaches serving, defense, passing and attacking as “a mindset”. He has the week to get them into the winning mindset.
Nebraska welcomes Penn State to the Devaney Center on Friday, November 19, with first serve set for 8 p.m. The match will be televised on BTN and streamed via its digital extension on the FOX Sports app. John Baylor and Lauren Cook West will also have the radio call on Huskers Radio Network.