Nebraska Volleyball opens up 2018 season with VERT Challenge
In the fourth year of the VERT Challenge, Nebraska volleyball finally got its turn to host said event. They lost to Florida on Friday night, but swept the Oregon Ducks on Saturday to even their record at 1-1.
Nebraska volleyball hosting the VERT Challenge came at the perfect time too, as the Huskers are coming off their second National Championship in the last three years. Hosting the VERT Challenge after that run in 2017 for the title was the perfect start to the season.
What was even cooler was that the Huskers actually were in a rematch of the 2017 National Championship Game, hosting the Florida Gators in their first match of the season. Similar to last year, the Cornhuskers have a young team, with just two seniors starting for Big Red and zero juniors.
We all know that Nebraska volleyball doesn’t rebuild though, but reinvent. Year in and year out, they’re right there when it comes to the best teams in the nation, starting the year off ranked number two in the country.
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Nebraska got off to a rocky start in their season opener against Florida. The Gators were probably out for blood after losing in four sets to Nebraska eight months earlier in Kansas City and it absolutely showed in this match.
The Huskers looked sloppy in the first two sets, but that tends to happen with a young team. Not to mention they have a new starting setter in Nicklin Hames, who’s only a freshman and filling some big shoes with Kelly Hunter graduating last year.
While Nebraska got some momentum in the third set, they weren’t able to force a fifth set. The crowd was mostly quiet throughout the night due to Florida doing a good job at stopping any type of momentum Nebraska might have had. The Huskers looked out of sync for most of the match, but did look like they were slowly starting to gel when they won the third set.
It also didn’t help that Mikaela Foecke didn’t look quite like herself (despite having 11 kills on the night). It was obvious she felt like she had to do more due to being one of two starting seniors and the rest of the team being relatively young.
The Cornhuskers also had 13 service errors, which is never going to put you in the win column. Those are free points for the other team and the Gators capitalized on Nebraska’s mistakes.
Even after dropping their first match to Florida, however, Nebraska fans didn’t sweat it. After all, the girls started off 0-2 last year and look how 2017 ended for Big Red. With their second match coming against Oregon, the Huskers would have time to fix their mistakes and they did just that, sweeping the Ducks in three sets.
Foecke looked like herself again, notching 15 kills against the Ducks and being totally dominant at the net. The Huskers also cleaned up their serving, only recording eight errors on the evening and capitalizing on Oregon’s 12 errors at the service line.
Nebraska volleyball, now 1-1 on the young season, won’t play their next match until Friday when they’ll actually participate in two matches. The first coming against the Ohio Bobcats (of the MAC) and the second against Wake Forrest (of the AAC) in the Ameritas Players Challenge.
The loss to Florida wasn’t great, but it might have honestly been a good thing to have ended the winning streak(s) (home and overall) early on. That’s one less thing putting pressure on this young team.
There will be growing pains for the Cornhuskers in 2018, much like there was last year, but we’ve seen how well this team overcomes stuff like that. They’re still absolutely going to be a contender to hold the trophy again in December.
Go Big Red!