#4 Nebraska Volleyball Downs #16 Creighton in Four Sets

#4 Nebraska 3 vs #16 Creighton 1 - 25-9, 25-13, 23-25, 25-20

Coach Cook thought that beating the other college teams in Nebraska was an accomplishment worth working towards. He talked about it leading up to the match against Creighton and used it to focus his players. After beating Omaha last Wednesday in Memorial Stadium and Creighton tonight in Devaney, John Cook unofficially deemed his team the state champions.

His team was sharp and played lights out volleyball for two sets. There really was nothing going wrong on the Nebraska side of the net. Merritt Beason was particularly impressive in the front and backrow as an attacker. She had 37 attempts and led all players with 17 kills.

Lindsay Krause and Harper Murray added 12 and 10 kills respectively. Krause was very low error with only one which led to a .478 hitting percentage.

Set three was a different story as Huskers “lost focus” according to Coach Cook and made “knucklehead errors”. He spoke to them during the match and extensively after the match about playing until the final point.

This was the first match this season in which Nebraska was pushed to four sets. Set four wasn’t unnecessary, Nebraska could have won in three, but is best used as a lesson through the rest of the season as an example of playing high level, focused ball until the end. This example will be used by the coaching staff and captains as the competition continues to improve through the season.

Nebraska rebounded in set four with strong serving, defense and reduced hitting errors. Set four included seven hitting errors compared to three, one and five errors in the other sets.

Nebraska defense was beautiful to watch. Lexi Rodriguez led all players with 14 digs followed closely by Bergen Reilly with 11 and Laney Choboy with 10. Choboy’s number is impressive as she only plays three rotations, half the time.

All three of these players not only dig the first hard driven ball but keep balls in play during scramble. This is a contagious mindset of, ‘the ball doesn’t drop on our floor’. Other players catch this mindset and soon the whole team believes ANY ball can come up.

Serving was one more point of pride for the Huskers. While there were only six aces by Nebraska tonight, serves were hard and flat and caused passing trouble for the Bluejays. This was a Bluejay team adjusting to play without their star, Norah Sis. She was dressed but did not play a point.

Her sub Destiny Ndam-Simpson, from Omaha, NE had a team high 13 kills and hit .242. Those are great numbers for anyone but amazing for a freshman substitute. Creighton’s setter, Kendra Wait, was also impressive. Coach Cook said at least twice that she should be a first team All-American based on the way she can fool the block and distribute the ball.

Wait attacked the ball successfully five of seven times. Many of those times nobody touched the ball before it hit the floor; she fooled everyone!

Nebraska welcomes Long Beach State to the Devaney Center on Saturday September 9th at 7 pm CT.