After a tough start to the 2017 season, the Huskers turned things around to make it to their third straight NCAA Tournament. They are riding an 18 match winning streak heading into their Final Four match against Penn State.
After losing a number of their top players following the 2016 season, the Huskers making it this far in the season seemed improbable, but they were able to defeat these odds and head into a great rivalry match in Kansas City, Missouri.
Final Four History
Nebraska has a rich history of making the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. Their first year in the tournaments final four was in 1986 where they were the runner-up.
- 1986 – runner-up
- 1989 – runner-up
- 1990 – semifinals
- 1995 – champions
- 1996 – semifinals
- 1998 – semifinals
- 2000 – champions
- 2001 – semifinals
- 2005 – runner-up
- 2006 – champions
- 2008 – semifinals
- 2015 – champions
- 2016 – semifinals
The Huskers have appeared in 13 Final Fours with three national championships won. In head coach, John Cook‘s first season with the team in 2000, the Huskers won their second national championship after winning five years prior. They won again in 2006 and then only made one more Final Four up until Cook’s third national title with the squad in 2015. They are now on their third straight Final Four with a championship and a semifinal appearance.
In a Nutshell
It was a rough start for the Huskers this season, as they were without setter Kelly Hunter in their first weekend due to an injury, to which they lost both their matches against then-#18 Oregon and then-#12 Florida as the #5 seed in the nation. They went on to lose just one more match in the preseason to an upset-bound Northern Iowa squad before starting Big Ten play with a then-#2 Penn State team.
Against Penn State, Nebraska won in straight sets on the road and making the win the first time the Nittany Lions were swept at home in nearly 15 years. They won their next five matches but fell at the hands of a youthful Wisconsin team on the road before winning out the Big Ten and claiming the Big Ten title.
Heading into their Final Four match, the Huskers have won 18 straight matches and will look to take down the Nittany Lions in the tournament once again.
Statistically Speaking
Leading the team this season is setter Hunter with 10.84 assists per set on the year along with 2.67 digs per set. The lone setter on the squad has led five players to put down more than 2.0 kills per set – Mikaela Foecke (3.47), Annika Albrecht (3.08), Briana Holman (2.42), Jazz Sweet (2.24) and Lauren Stivrins (2.09).
Holman leads the team with 1.17 blocks per set while Stivrins has 1.01 blocks per set in her first season on the court.
In the backcourt, Kenzie Maloney leads the team with 3.59 digs per set while Albrecht has 2.74 and Foecke has picked up 2.26 digs per set on the year.
The Tournament Thus Far
The Huskers have had a smooth ride through the 2017 NCAA Tournament so far. They entered the tournament as the #5 seed in the tournament, having hosting duties in the regional semifinal and finals rounds taken from them without at top-four seed.
Their first match came against Stony Brook to which they rolled through in straight sets and followed that up with a sweep of Washington State in their final home match of 2017. They headed to Kentucky to face off against Colorado in the regional semifinal match, sweeping yet another team. In the regional finals, Nebraska faced #4 seeded Kentucky, winning in four sets, losing their first set in the NCAA Tournament.
Now, the Huskers have made their way to the Final Four for the third straight season and will face off against Penn State to move onto the finals.
On the Honor Roll
Albrecht earned the AVCA Player of the Week earlier this season following the teams win over Penn State and Rutgers. At the end of the year, Hunter was tabbed the Big Ten Setter of the Year for helping the Huskers to the Big Ten title.
The AVCA just announced their All-American list for the year, to which Hunter was named to the First-Team while Albrecht and Foecke were named to the Second Team and Holman making the Honorable Mention list.
What They’re Saying
Head coach John Cook
“Our match-up with Penn State, if you’ve followed the history of us, Nebraska-Penn State, we’ve had a lot of epic matches. I’ve been having a lot of flashbacks to several years, 2008, 2011, last year and of course our match with them this year at Penn State. So it’s one of the, I think, most exciting rivalries if you want to call it that, in college volleyball. They’re a lot of fun to play, and I think both teams bring out the best in each other.
So it’s exciting for volleyball. Everybody has been chasing Penn State with what they’ve done over the last ten years. They set a really high bar. So we’re excited to play them.”
“Going into that Penn State, we had lost to Northern Iowa the week before. So I’m like, the wheels have come off. I hope we can even survive the Big Ten and get to the NCAA tournament.
But, like many years and sometimes after a loss, you learn a lot. And I think our team really learned a lot from that weekend, and we were able to go into Penn State and play great. So that was a great bounce back by our team. And I think the fact that when we did that, it just reaffirmed everything we’ve been telling them. We have a chance to be a good team, and we can do this. We thought we could go in there and compete really well with Penn State, and of course, when we won, it just helped boost our confidence.
You’ve been around us long enough to know at some point during the season you have to have some significant wins to validate everything you’ve been working on. Obviously for this team that was a huge significant win, maybe as big as you can get in the Big Ten Conference to validate everything we’ve been training and working on. This is working for us.”
Senior Kelly Hunter
“Yeah, I think Coach nailed it the last ten years they’ve been that team to beat. It might not be exactly a Nebraska-Penn State rivalry, but everyone wants to beat them. So they’re just kind of that team you get really hyped up to play. Especially this year, only one loss all season, everyone’s hyped to play them.
I just think ever since I’ve been here and I’ve been old enough to understand Nebraska volleyball, that’s been a great match to watch. I know my time here, we’ve had some great matches against them, and I think tomorrow will be another great match-up.”
Senior Annika Albrecht
“I think they kind of nailed it earlier, but something our team does really well is we stick to what we train. We always talk about serve and pass, and I think we did a really good job ball controlling them and starting them off out of system with our serve. That really helped our block and everything kind of fell from there. So I think just sticking to what we trained and sticking to our game plan really helped us. I didn’t think they knew what to do.”
Defense wins championships, and it should have been obvious to anyone there which team ruled the back row.