The good times keep on rolling.
After a three-set sweep of a well-built Wisconsin team on Friday night, the top-ranked Nebraska volleyball team came back home on a quick road trip and sent Oregon back to its pond.
Sunday’s matinee was far from an easy battle for the Huskers, until the third set at least, but they still managed to put a sweep on the board. Another sellout crowd took in a fast, 94-minute contest that saw Nebraska win its sets 25-21, 25-20 and 25-12.
Here are three fast hits following the win:
Time for a challenge
Strictly by the set scores, this was the Huskers’ toughest game since their contest with Arizona in late September.
Oregon’s numbers were never really that pretty, but it was the kill numbers that were able to keep them in the game. Through the first two sets, the Ducks put up 14 kills in each, and outscored Nebraska in that department 28-24.
The error numbers were substantially higher for the visitors, but one thing that Oregon was able to do more so than most of the Huskers’ previous opponents was be able to get the ball on the Teraflex in the area where points count.
Oregon also came in as one of the hardest-hitting teams in the entire conference.
“They’re really hard to stop, and a great serving team,” head coach Dani Busboom Kelly said postgame. “We knew it was a huge challenge.”
Allowing the Ducks to hang around deep into the sets was something that the team was not proud of, but Busboom Kelly was happy to see that her players could find a groove.
“I thought we started a hair slow,” she said.
Opponent aces keep climbing
Nebraska is nowhere near the worst in the conference when it comes to getting aced. They are also the best in the conference in service errors, having 13 fewer than the 2nd-best Indiana entering play Sunday.
The one spot that has troubled the Huskers’ back-row defense all season has been those service aces, and especially it jumps off the page when Nebraska has the lowest total in service aces recorded in the Big Ten.
Five were recorded by the Ducks today, and the trouble was evenly split across the back row. Junior libero Laney Choboy was tacked with two, freshman outside Teraya Sigler had one and, surprisingly, junior outside Harper Murray was charged with two.
Oregon’s top two attackers, Alanah Clemente and Valentina Vaulet, brought extremely challenging jump serves to the floor today. Seemingly, in every situation where the Huskers would not want one of those two behind the service line, they were there. Three of the five aces for the Ducks came off the arms of those two attackers.
“There’s always room for growth,” senior outside hitter Taylor Landfair said postgame. “I think we also go into the gym every day expecting to get better.”
Starting sooner
Life is not all that easy when you struggle to serve and pass. Nebraska knows that it is a good serve and pass team, accentuated by being at the top or near the top of the passing leaderboards each week. Oregon gave the Huskers a run for their money with some travel hangovers.
“I don’t think we expected it to come in that hot,” Murray said postgame, “but that’s on us to fight it high in the middle and run the offense.”
What makes the Huskers as lethal as they are, even when they are struggling to pass the ball efficiently, is that they are still scoring. Whether that was two-touch setter dumps or soft roll shots off the top of the block, even pulling out an out-of-system slide, Nebraska got points on the board and swept again.
sports@dailynebraskan.com
