The news doesn’t stop surrounding Husker volleyball!

On this week’s Volleyball State, Jeff Sheldon and Lincoln Arneal dove into the addition of Virginia Adriano and discussed what kind of player the program is getting. They also discussed the changes coming to the Bob Devaney Sports Center and how it will affect season ticket holders.

Below is a lightly-edited transcript of select conversations.

“Nebraska wasn’t recruiting against another school, they were recruiting against the Italian pro league”

Lincoln: Last week, Nebraska announced the addition of Virginia Adriano, who is a 6’5 opposite, who played for Bergamo in Serie A1 this past year.

Jeff: Most people I think now would tell you that this is where the same league that Conegliano plays in. Vero Volley, which is one of the best teams in the world. And these are always teams that are fighting for the European club championship and have some true international stars on it. So, I’ve been trying to make like an NBA analogy for this. You know, this is like somebody who played in the G-League that was a big star in the G-League, but then that got called up and was getting ninth or tenth-man roster time with…

Lincoln: The Orlando Magic.

Jeff: Yeah. Pick your mid-tier NBA team; someone who can seriously play. And then that person, after that, going back down and playing for like Duke for a season; that’s sort of like what this is like.

Let’s talk about what we know about Virginia Adriano first. She averaged 2.4 kills a set with a .385 hitting percentage, in some limited time with the top division with Bergamo. She really stood out in the second division; the second tier of the Italian league. Shit .384 there and was a real star. She’s young, obviously, because she’s in college. She’s 21 years old or about to turn 21. And she’s going to have three seasons of eligibility.

And Lincoln, I know you’ve been able to dig up some highlights of her from, from the Italian league. And then she’s really played a big role on the Italian junior national team. So, she’s played in some under 21 European world championships. And, this is a real player that Nebraska is added.

Lincoln: What I saw is she’s a big physical player. I she’s 6’5. And from what I can tell on video, very physical player hits with power. She also [has a] pretty decent serve from what I saw too. She’s what you want from an international opposite too.

A lot of times an international ball, the opposite is the leading attacker to me. They’re the ones who are the terminators. We kind of talked about the U.S. national team; the outside hitter’s a lot more better passing. They can attack too, but they’re better with ball control. Whereas the opposite, they’re attacking in all six rotations and expected to the ball down too. She’s young, but you see glimpses of why she’s put in that position because she has the potential to be really good there.

Jeff: Well, if she spent any time in the Italy gym, she’s got to watch potentially the best player in the world. Italy’s opposite is Paola Egonu, who is the star of the Olympics last year and helped Italy win the gold medal, who isn’t much older than her. I want to say Egonu is in her mid to late-20s. That Italy opposite rooms pretty stacked right now.

And she joins a pretty stacked position group at Nebraska because you’re going to have Ryan Hunter, who’s going to be a true freshman this fall. And you’ve got Allie Sczech, the transfer from Baylor who’s going to arrive this summer. And so all three of these options – none of them have taken an official swing in a Nebraska uniform yet – but it’s a room that’s maybe now with Adriano’s addition become the most intriguing position group at Nebraska. I mean, that’s how I feel. Do you feel that way? 

Lincoln: For sure. I think people were head over heels of Ryan Hunter, which she put on a show in her first spring exhibition match in Kansas, came a little bit down against South Dakota State too. But again, the potential is there too. I got a chance to talk to [assistant coach] Jaylen Reyes last week after the announcement came out, just to kind of learn the backstory with the recruitment.

And it really kind of came from last year. Merritt Beason was All-American as a junior, but she was the only person that was an opposite hitter on Nebraska’s roster last year. And she struggled a bit at times. Nebraska, I know they trained Skyler Pierce there too, but they also want to preserve her year of eligibility and I think they really just wanted to make sure that they had options.

Ryan Hunter is a comp, coming off a knee injury. So they hit the portal and they started this kind of pursuit really back in December last year.  Jaylen Reyes, for as a good of recruiter as he is, didn’t have a whole lot of European contacts. So, he really kind of worked people that he didn’t know, developed a lot of contacts, and landed on Virginia from his contacts and then started that conversation with her in late January.

This all started under John Cook, because one of his first conversations with Dani Busboom Kelly. He’s like, “By the way, what do you think of this potential opposite over in Italy?” So, one of his first conversations kind of bring her into the kind of groundwork he had laid to learn about this too. And from I can tell Nebraska wasn’t really recruiting against another school. They were recruiting against the Italian pro league; whether or not she would stay there and continue to play. Like we said, the best professional league in the world or bring her over, get her a chance to play in the collegiate world with one of the premier collegiate programs. 

Changes are coming for season ticket holders

Jeff: They’re renovating the Devaney Center for what, the 2026 season? Not this fall, but next season. They’re going to go up to 10,000 seats, which probably adds what? Just a little over a thousand additional seats from what they’ve got now.

Lincoln: Yeah, they’ve gotten some crowds of 9,000, including the standing room only. I think maybe just once they’ve eclipsed 9,000, but they’ve exceeded 9,000, including those people up on the upper top edge standing for the matches.

Jeff: Yeah. And if you are a Nebraska sports ticket holder, you got an email this week that talked about, how this was going to get re-seated. So, the re-seating starts next year, right? It doesn’t start this year.

Lincoln: Correct. They, they get noticed that this year that their donation amounts went up. So, before the re-seat, the Nebraska athletic department is requesting more money from the fans because they have they have such a high retention rate – like 98% retention rate – and just the turnover for tickets. There’s a long, long waiting list that people got off of. Was it last year? They added some seats to the ends, both east-west end lines. But there’s still a lot of demand for those tickets, so they are increasing the donation amounts as well.

Jeff: I guess maybe to look at this in a big picture way, if you’re like, “oh my gosh, you need to donate money to get volleyball tickets?” Because a lot of places, you don’t need to pay to go to volleyball matches. But Nebraska has a number of people who have been season ticket holders for a long, long time. Even going back to the Coliseum days. And that’s one of the reasons they wanted to move to the Devaney Center because it doubled the seating essentially, maybe more than doubled it and let in more people interested in season tickets. But those people didn’t necessarily have to pay a donation or much of a donation to the athletic department to be able to buy season tickets.

Well, they have seen what the market is for this now and they’ve got a waiting list and tickets are somewhat hard to get. So what do you do when your supply is limited? You raise prices. And so Nebraska is going to charge people more for the right to do that. And then, you donate money to the athletic department, you get a corresponding amount of points – of donor points from the Husker Athletic Fund – and then starting in 2026, it does not matter where your season tickets are right now, or where they historically had been; they’re going to play Yahtzee with it and everything’s up for grabs.

And the more donations you make, the more points you have, that will determine just like in football – and this is coming to Nebraska football, as well, don’t be surprised when that happens – people who donate more money will get the more desirable seats.

Also on the episode, they spoke with US Head Coach Erik Sullivan, the new head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team, about his first head coaching job at the international level, program identity, the challenges of international play, and more. They also unpack from recent John Cook quotes and more!

Watch the entire episode below!

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