Nebraska volleyball has no time to wallow.
It lost to No. 20 Utah in five sets on Saturday after handling No. 19 Creighton in three sets on Wednesday. The Huskers dropped three spots to No. 6 in the ACVA rankings after their first loss of the season.
With the Huskers traveling to No. 16 Stanford on Tuesday and hosting No. 5 Louisville on Saturday, they will have to bounce back fast. Tuesday's game will be at 7:00 p.m. on the Pac-12 Network and Saturday's game will be on BTN at 7:00 p.m.
“Reload and go,” Head Coach John Cook said. “You're only as good as your last match. There's a lot of hard matches, so you got to get over wins and losses fast and prepare and get better and learn from it.”
Here is a full breakdown of Nebraska’s week in this edition of The Rally:
Scouting the opponents:
No. 16 Stanford:
The Cardinal’s 4-2 record doesn’t tell the true story of the season they’ve had thus far. Stanford played No. 5 Florida, No. 1 Texas, No. 13 Minnesota and No. 18 Penn State in 12 days. They beat Florida 3-1 and Penn State in five sets and lost the other two.
Stanford had its worst season in head coach Kevin Hambly’s four-year tenure in 2020. They finished 2-8 and 11th in the Pac-12 conference, its lowest conference standing in school history. The previous low was a fifth-place finish in 1979 in the Western Collegiate Athletic Association (WCAA) under head coach Fred Sturm.
The Cardinals are working on bouncing back from an uncharacteristically terrible season but it will not be easy. They play the No. 6 ranked team on Tuesday and Kentucky, the reigning 2020 National Champions, on Sunday.
No. 5 Louisville:
The Louisville Cardinals swept then-No. 6 Purdue to jump five spots to No. 5 in this week’s AVCA rankings. Louisville dominated the Boilermakers 25-19, 25-16, 25-21. That was their seventh sweep of their eight opponents this season.
Louisville remains undefeated in eight games. They host No. 8 Kentucky on Wednesday after losing nine of the last ten matchups to the Wildcats.
The Cardinals are hitting .335 as a team and have held their opponents to a .124 hitting percentage.
Players to watch:
Each week it gets harder and harder to pick only a few players to highlight in this section. With Big Ten games approaching fast, it’ll continue to be difficult to highlight all the talented players but I will pick a few to give you a taste of the team’s weapons.
Both Stanford and Louisville have many talented players and here are a few of them::
Caitie Baird, Stanford:
Redshirt sophomore Caitie Baird is the Cardinal’s to-go weapon. She has 93 kills, a .281 hitting percentage, 51 digs and 13 blocks on the season.
The 6-foot-3 outside hitter is coming off of the best game of her career. Baird had 24 kills, 10 digs and three blocks against the Nittany Lions.
During her freshman season, Baird made the 2020 All-Pac-12 Conference and the All-Pac-12 Freshman teams. She was also named an All-American honorable mention by VolleyballMagazine.com.
Kendall Kipp, Stanford:
Kendall Kipp is Stanford’s other powerful opposite hitter. Kipp has the second-most kills on the team behind Baird with 75 and 17 blocks, including six blocks in the Cardinal’s loss to Minnesota.
The 6-foot-5 junior is on the Preseason All-Pac-12 Conference selection. As a freshman in 2019, she was on the conference’s Freshman Team after helping Stanford to a 2018 National Championship.
Elena Oglivie, Stanford:
Just like Baird, libero Elena Oglivie had a career-high game against Penn State this previous week. The 5-foot-10 sophomore had 27 digs and now averages 5.05 digs per set.
Oglivie has dug at least 15 balls each game this season. This brings her season totally to 111 digs. Since last season, she has upped her digs per set by one.
As a freshman, Oglivie was an All-Pac-12 honorable mention in 2020 and has been named the conference's defensive player of the week twice.
Anna Stevenson, Louisville:
Middle blocker Anna Stevenson has dominated this season with 65 kills and 10 errors on 119 swings. In her 24 sets, she is hitting .462 and recorded 27 blocks. In Louisville’s upset over Purdue, the 6-foot-2 graduate student had 11 kills with no errors and a .611 hitting percentage.
During her second season at Louisville, Stevenson, an Auburn transfer, was named a Second Team All-American after playing in all 61 of the Cardinal’s sets. In 2020, she had 145 kills with a .406 hitting percentage, 10 aces, 26 digs and 68 blocks.
Anna DeBeer, Louisville:
Louisville is the attack of the Annas.
Outside hitter Anna DeBeer has 64 kills, a .373 hitting percentage and 50 digs this season. She recorded a double-double with 12 kills and 12 digs in the Cardinal’s victory over Purdue.
DeBeer had a very decorated freshman season as she was named the 2020 ACC Freshman of the Year, First Team All-ACC and ACC All-Freshman. The 6-foot-0 Louisville native had 174 kills, a .255 hitting percentage, 90 digs and 22 blocks in 55 sets last season.
Stat Attack:
.020: Nebraska’s left side hitters Lexi Sun and Madi Kubik hit a combined .020 against Utah in their previous match.
Sun is a fifth-year senior and Kubik is a junior, starting all three of her years as a Husker. These players are veterans and Nebraska relies on them to come up with big swings and find ways to fight through bad-hitting games.
In the Utah game, freshman Ally Batenhorst brought a spark on the left side with 10 kills, three errors and a .292 clip.
Nebraska’s left hitters will be going against Stanford’s Baird and Kipp on Tuesday and will need to put pressure on them with blocking and mix up their shots against the talented blockers.
Cook said Batenhorst played over Kubik towards the end of the Utah match because “Madi wasn’t killing balls and Ally killed some balls.”
He will play the hitter that is killing the most balls versus Stanford and Louisville. But Sun’s and Kubik’s experience will be useful against the very talented teams this week.
69: Nebraska had 69 digs against Creighton earlier in the week. The Huskers back row absolutely suffocated the Bluejays offense, which had 28 kills on 131 swings and hit .053.
Utah’s defense gave NU a taste of their own medicine with 78 digs against the Huskers, including 21 from libero Vanessa Ramirez. Nebraska had 63 digs on their side of the court and setter Nicklin Hames had a team-high 17 digs.
The Huskers have “four elite defensive players,” as Cook likes to say, in Lexi Rodriguez, Keonilei Akana, Kenzie Knuckles and Hames. Those four players will be key in Nebraska being successful in the upcoming weeks and months.
NU needs to have a suffocating back row defense but also needs to convert more of their digs into kills.
Storylines:
Two of the most dominant programs in volleyball history:
Nebraska and Stanford volleyball programs combine for 14 national championships and the duo has won five of the last six championships.
The Cardinals lead the series 10-6 and have currently won the last three matchups vs. Nebraska. The Huskers haven’t beaten Stanford since 2008.
In 2018, the teams met in the National Championship game, which the Cardinals won in five sets. The following year, No. 2-ranked Stanford traveled to Lincoln for the Ameritas Players Challenge and defeated the top-ranked Huskers 3-1.
Cook is 4-4 against the Cardinals in his career and 0-2 against Hambly.
Strong Husker ties in Louisville:
Louisville’s head coach Dani Busboom Kelly played volleyball at Nebraska from 2003 to 2006 and won a national championship for Cook in 2006.
She was named the 2006 Big 12 co-Libero of the Year after changing positions from setter and is considered one of the greatest liberos in Nebraska history. The 2006 team captain went to Adams Freeman High School in Cortland, Neb.
Busboom Kelly was an assistant coach at Nebraska from 2012 to 2016 and won a National Championship in 2015. She coached players like Kadie and Amber Rolfzen, Justine Wong-Orantes, Kelly Hunter (current Nebraska volunteer coach) and Mikaela Foecke.
Busboom Kelly’s roots don’t stop there.
She is married to Lane Kelly, who is a former Husker football long snapper that was also at Nebraska in the mid-2000s.
Busboom Kelly will be returning to the Devaney Center to play against her former team and coach. One can only imagine the memories that will come flooding back.
