After stunning loss, is sky falling on Nebraska volleyball?

The premise is straightforward. You ask me some questions — or vent your frustrations — about Nebraska Athletics. Any sport. I attempt to answer them.

If you want your question included in the next edition of the mailbag, find me on Twitter/X at @Amie_Just, Threads/Instagram at @_amiejust or email me at ajust@journalstar.com.

This was asked during No. 2 Nebraska’s match against SMU that the Huskers ultimately dropped in three. I said no at the time, while the match was ongoing, and I still believe that answer is right.

Nebraska did not hit well. Nebraska did not serve well. Nebraska did not receive well. Nebraska did not pass well. Nebraska did not come together and flush the mistakes either. It all snowballed into what we saw Tuesday night: just the second-ever sweep loss to an unranked team in John Cook’s tenure at Nebraska.

All the factoids surrounding the match sound bad. Just the 13th loss since 2000 to an unranked team. First time losing to an unranked team since 2017.

The road ahead does not get easier.

Sure, Nebraska has The Citadel and Montana State this weekend. But looking further ahead? The best Creighton team in recent memory comes to town on Tuesday. They host Stanford the week after that. They go back to Kentucky to face Louisville in a couple of weeks.

I predicted before the season that Nebraska would lose a couple of nonconference matches, but SMU was not the one I anticipated. There are many, many, many lessons to learn from this for Nebraska. They are not unbeatable. They have quite a few things to fix. Gotta work on passing. Gotta work on serving. Gotta work on serve receive. Gotta work on attacking.

But they also, in the words of John Cook, need to work on “attitude and effort.”

“(SMU) played very inspired tonight,” Cook said after the match on the Husker Radio Network. “They played great. They won all the long rallies, so that’s attitude and effort right there.”

You can fix bad passing. You can fix bad serving. You can fix errors in serve receive. You can fix attack errors. But if you don’t believe in yourself? If you don’t believe in your teammates? None of that gets fixed and we’re in for a long season.

However. I think Cook, Jaylen Reyes, Kelly Hunter and Jordan Larson get them right.

But if they come out looking lackluster against The Citadel — a team that started the season 23-0 last year — we have a problem.

One of the only high points on Tuesday was sophomore middle blocker Andi Jackson. 

Jackson had Nebraska’s only service ace. She was in on six of Nebraska’s nine blocks. She had 8 kills with zero errors on 12 swings for a hitting percentage of .667. Her 12 total points were a team-high.

She was the only attacker who didn’t have a hitting error on Tuesday. She was also the only attacker who a hitting percentage of over .300. 

With Jackson’s success amid the mess, I would imagine that the team will rally around the wise words from Nebraska’s captains, opposite hitter Merritt Beason and libero Lexi Rodriguez. 

I feel like that would be Nebraska’s best bet. He’s not only one of Nebraska’s fastest players, but he’s physical and gifted in coverage. And who wouldn’t want to see one of the best draft-eligible corners in the country going up against one of the nation’s best receivers?

There’s truly no “stopping” Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, but rather how much can you limit them? They are game changers. They are incredibly athletic. Hunter is very physical and is good at leveraging his body to make tough and acrobatic catches.

One of the best ways to hinder Sanders will be with the pass rush. Sanders isn’t afraid to wait a little longer to wait for something to open up downfield before he takes off himself.

Nebraska sacked Sanders seven times in last season’s contest. In total, Sanders was sacked 56 times last season — the second-highest mark in all of FBS to average 4.67 sacks per game for a whopping loss of 492 yards.

Expect Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher, Jimari Butler and Co. to thrive on Saturday.