KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Can you breathe?
A record crowd, the largest ever to watch a college volleyball match, finally found its wind, and it made a sound — an exultant whoosh/roar combination — when Kelly Hunter completed a play she couldn’t remember to end a match no one would soon forget.
Nebraska extended its storybook season with another comeback worthy of the NU-Penn State legacy. This one came in the national semifinals, where the Huskers’ 25-18, 23-25, 24-26, 28-26, 15-11 win in front of 19,000 — most wearing red — prolonged the party in Kansas City until Saturday night, when Nebraska will play for its fifth national championship against Florida.
“This team never ceases to amaze me,” coach John Cook said, “with how resilient they are, and how much fight they have, and how hard they work together. We could’ve won it 3-0. We could’ve lost it in four. It was just a point-by-point battle.”
Junior Mikaela Foecke’s 19 kills led all players, and headed up four Huskers in double figures. Seniors Annika Albrecht and Briana Holman each had 13 kills. Freshman Jazz Sweet added 12.
But it was the Husker defense that foiled Penn State like none other. The Huskers outblocked the Nittany Lions 13-12 and held a 90-76 advantage in digs, with five Huskers reaching double-digit saves. Penn State brought a nation-leading .345 attack percentage into the match, and saw its season end after hitting a season-low .217.
Penn State’s previous season low was .227 against Nebraska in a 3-0 NU win Sept. 22, and again Thursday Nebraska’s serving dealt Penn State problems. NU had 10 aces, led by four from junior libero Kenzie Maloney.
“I think what Nebraska does is they have good service pressure,” Penn State coach Russ Rose said. “They’re a good defensive team. These things kind of go hand in hand. They don’t make a lot of errors.”
No match in Nebraska’s winning streak, which now stands at 18, put the Huskers closer to defeat than Thursday’s NCAA semifinal. Penn State (33-2) was achingly close to ending a six-match slide against the Huskers when the Nittany Lions erased a late NU lead for the third straight set.
Nebraska (31-4) had led past the 20-point mark in each set, only to see the Nittany Lions roar back to take the second and third sets. Again in Game 4, Penn State’s push wiped out the Huskers’ 24-22 lead, and after Heidi Thelen and Tori Gorrell blocked Albrecht the Nittany Lions led 26-25, putting Nebraska’s season on a knife’s edge.
And who knows what would have happened had two Penn State players not gotten tangled up on the ensuing rally, when Holman’s swing was kept in the air, but fell to the floor as two Nittany Lions unsnarled. With the set tied 26-26, Sweet banged a shot off the block and out to give the Huskers a set point, and redshirt freshman Lauren Stivrins sent it to a fifth set by tipping down an overpass.
Sweet, playing about an hour east of her hometown of Tecumseh, Kansas, and Stivrins combined for 19 kills and 11 blocks.
“I know Jazz was really excited because this is like her hometown,” Cook said. “I think she was pumped up. She struggled a little bit for a while, but man, she turned it on at the end and it was great to see.
“Lauren made some huge plays for us in some long rallies, got a couple blocks that were just really great plays and huge points for us to help us get momentum.”
None came bigger from Stivrins than a pair of blocks in Game 5. The Huskers ran off four straight points to take an 8-6 lead at the changeover, and on the first play after the switch, Stivrins and Sweet blocked All-American Simone Lee to put Nebraska up by three.
Lee, who led the Nittany Lions with 18 kills on 50 swings in her final collegiate match, scored on the next rally, followed by an Ali Frantti kill to pull PSU within 9-8 before the Huskers again answered with their freshmen.
Sweet scored to make it 10-8, and on the ensuing rally, Penn State again tried to find Lee, throwing her a tricky bump set in the back row. The 6-foot-4 Stivrins elevated and turned Lee’s swing back for her ninth block of the night, and when Albrecht tooled the Nittany Lions’ block on the following play to make it 12-8, the die essentially had been cast.
“We said every single point of this fifth set is the national championship point,” Hunter said. “We need to think like that. We need to play like that.”
Nebraska’s three seniors closed it out as the teams traded side outs to the end. Albrecht, who committed nine hitting errors, had no conscience when she unloaded on a shallow, cross-court shot to put the Huskers up 13-9, and Foecke’s final kill made it 14-10.
“I talked to Kelly, and we worked on a different tempo for the set,” Albrecht said. “I talked to the (defensive specialists) and told them just to be there (to cover), and I’m just going to take rips. There was nothing to lose in this game. Penn State was supposed to beat us. Just take rips and trust that my teammates are there for me.”
But the Huskers clinched their berth in Saturday’s final not with a bang, but a whimper. A Penn State serve forced a tight pass that pulled Hunter to the net, but before All-America middle blocker Haleigh Washington could muscle it down to keep PSU alive, Hunter redirected it to Washington’s right and just beyond the reach of a diving Lee.
Asked after the match to describe the final play, Hunter’s memory came up empty. She looked at Albrecht and Foecke for help.
“What happened?”
What happened was Hunter improved to 15-1 in the NCAA tournament as the Huskers’ starting setter, a new school best. Her 23 digs were a career high, and she improved to 7-0 all-time against Penn State.
“She’s beat Penn State seven straight times,” Cook said. “You tell me anybody ever in the history of volleyball that’s done that.”
Like the rest of the Huskers, Hunter talks about the Nittany Lions with glowing respect. But in her career, Nebraska has never known defeat at Penn State’s hands.
That was something no one needed to remind her of.
“We say they’re the team to beat,” Hunter said, “but you know, Nebraska might be the team to beat too.”
Nebraska (31-4)…………25 23 24 28 15
Penn State (33-2)……….18 25 26 26 11
NU (kills-aces-blocks): Foecke 19-1-3, Holman 13-0-4, Albrecht 13-0-4, Sweet 12-0-2, Stivrins 7-0-9, Hunter 2-1-6, Maloney 0-4-0, Atherton 0-2-0. Totals 66-10-25.
PSU: Lee 18-2-1, Washington 13-0-6, Frantti 9-0-2, Thelen 9-0-7, Gorrell 6-0-4, Detering 5-0-2, Reed 2-0-0, White 0-1-0, Weiskircher 0-1-0, Holcomb 0-1-0. Totals 62-5-22.
Set assists: NU 59 (Hunter 47, Maloney 6, Albrecht 3, Foecke 2, Townsend 1), PSU 54 (Weiskircher 25, Detering 24, White 3, Washington 1, Holcomb 1)
Attendance: 19,000
National Championship: #5 Nebraska vs. #2 Florida
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Sprint Center, Kansas City
Radio: 1600 AM, 105.5 FM, ncn21.com
NU coach John Cook enters AVCA Hall of Fame before game
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Before Nebraska took the court, coach John Cook was inducted into the American Volleyball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
While Cook learned he had been selected in July, the ceremony wasn’t until Thursday as part of the AVCA convention. Cook was one of four inductees in the 2017 class.
Cook joins former Nebraska coach Terry Pettit in the Hall with a growing résumé that has topped his predecessor’s. On a night when his coaching legend grew after leading the Huskers to a five-set victory over Penn State, Cook celebrated by watching more volleyball.
After fulfilling media obligations and signing autographs, Cook sat at the south end of the court to watch the third set of Florida and Stanford’s other semifinal Thursday.
Gators going for first(s)
All-America middle blocker Rhamat Alhassan had a team-high 17 kills on .517 hitting to lead No. 2 Florida into the final for the first time since 2003 with a 25-22, 25-21, 18-25, 18-25, 15-10 win over defending national champ Stanford in Thursday’s second semifinal.
The Gators will play Nebraska at 8 p.m. Saturday in search of their first national title, which would make national coach of the year Mary Wise the first woman to lead a team to an NCAA Division I volleyball crown.
Carli Snyder added 16 kills on 56 attempts and nine digs, while senior Shainah Joseph had 11 kills and hit .320.
Merete Lutz led Stanford (30-4) with 19 kills, and first-team All-American Kathryn Plummer had 16 kills on 46 swings.
After dropping Games 3 and 4, Florida’s block and defense clamped down in the fifth. The Gators stuffed three shots in the finale, and Stanford had six errors against five kills to hit minus-.040.
Both liberos reached the 20-dig mark with Stanford sophomore Morgan Hentz piling up a match-best 25 digs. Caroline Knop had 20 for Florida.
The NCAA final will be a rematch of Florida’s five-set win in Gainesville on Aug. 26. In that match, Nebraska played without injured setter Kelly Hunter, and nearly pulled off the win behind 18 kills from Foecke and 16 from Jazz Sweet.
Sophomore Rachael Kramer, the Gators’ 6-foot-8 middle blocker, had a match-high 20 kills against the Huskers. Kramer had eight kills and eight errors with five blocks against Stanford on Thursday.
Home-court edge?
It’s a complaint Russ Rose has voiced at previous final fours in which the Nittany Lions and Nebraska have played on or near the Huskers’ home turf.
Kansas City turned into Nebraska South on Thursday night as Husker fans took over the Sprint Center. Not a big surprise considering the NU campus is three hours from downtown K.C.
Rose’s 39th season as Penn State’s coach ended when Nebraska rallied for a five-set victory. As Nebraska rallied to tie and eventually win, Rose said the crowd played a part in how the match evolved.
“I thought we had a couple of kids that came down the stretch that were beat up and didn’t have as much pop in their legs,” Rose said. “Had they maybe played where the crowd was more partisan for them, they might have been able to find that energy.”
Both of Penn State’s losses in a 33-2 season were to the Huskers. Those were also the two matches in which the Nittany Lions had their worst offensive performances. PSU hit .217 Thursday after hitting .227 when the teams met in Happy Valley in late September.
Huskers serve notice
Nebraska tied its season high with 10 aces Thursday, led by four from Kenzie Maloney.
The junior libero from Louisville, Kentucky, has 12 aces in the NCAA tournament — tying the Husker postseason record.
“I think it’s great to see her succeed like that,” Mikaela Foecke said of Maloney. “She works on her serve day in and day out. She’s been super successful for us coming to the end of the season down the stretch. The way she yo-yos teams really gives them fits, and I think we’re really lucky to have her.”
Five Huskers fired aces, but NU got a surprise contribution from redshirt freshman Hunter Atherton, who had two aces.
Atherton entered the match in Game 3 to replace freshman Hayley Densberger as a serving substitute. Though Atherton had a team-high four service errors, Cook said her reward was greater than her risk.
“Even though she makes errors, she’s going for it,” Cook said. “She got us a run to help us win Game 3. I know those Penn State passers are worried about her serve. We see it all the time, and it is high error, but it is a gnarly serve.
“She doesn’t know where it’s going, that’s one of the reasons she misses a lot. But it’s very difficult to pass.”
Using her head, too
Nebraska senior defensive specialist Sydney Townsend was saluted during a break in the first set as winner of the Division I women’s volleyball Elite 90 award for the second consecutive year.
Townsend is one of two D-I volleyball players to win the award, which honors players who have reached the pinnacle of competition while also achieving the highest academic standards, more than once.
The Lincoln Pius X graduate has a 3.83 GPA in biochemistry. Townsend finished Thursday’s game with 298 digs this season, fourth most on the team.
Big Ten tiebreaker
To beat a Big Ten rival in the national semifinal is something that middle blocker Briana Holman said makes Nebraska’s victory Thursday more memorable.
“Any time we play Penn State it feels like a national championship game,” Holman said. “It’s always like that. Yes, we swept them (in September). But we knew that they were a completely different team.”
It certainly brought out the best in Holman, who led the Huskers in hitting percentage (.400) with 13 kills and three errors on 25 swings. The senior from DeSoto, Texas, also had 13 digs and one block.
Holman said that since both teams finished conference play 19-1, Thursday’s game served as a de facto tiebreaker. The Huskers won the conference title by virtue of their Sept. 22 sweep of the Nittany Lions.
“Since we split the Big Ten, that was kind of our ‘who really won the Big Ten game,’ ” Holman said. “We knew that it was going to be a battle and that it could potentially go five. We knew they weren’t just going to roll over because their seniors were out to get something.
“They won the national championship their freshman year, and they haven’t won one since. We knew that they were going to come and play hard.”
