No. 10 Nebraska volleyball is heading to its 10th national championship match.
The Huskers upset No. 3 Pitt 3-1 after dropping the first set (16-25, 25-17, 25-20, 25-22).
No. 4 Wisconsin took down undefeated No. 1 Louisville in the earlier game in five sets (25-23, 15-25, 25-21, 23-25, 15-9). The Badgers and Huskers will play for a national title on Saturday night at 6:15 p.m. on ESPN2.
Here are my three takes from Nebraska’s victory in the Final Four:
No matter what happens against Wisconsin, Lauren Stivrins will be leaving Nebraska as one of the best Husker players and one of the best team leaders of all time.
The middle blocker started her first season in 2017 with a national championship and deserves to go out competing for a title.
Stivrins took control in Nebraska’s match against Pitt and hit .529. She had nine kills and no errors on 17 swings. The 6-foot-4 athlete also added a team-high six blocks.
Toward the end of the third set, Stivrins led a 5-0 run from the service line including serving an ace. The Huskers went from up 19-18 to 23-18 after Stivrins’s run.
The sixth-year senior even got a back-row kill, her first of the season. In set two, Stivrins gave the Huskers a much-needed spark with two kills on three swings and three blocks. She did the same in the final set, adding four kills on six swings and two blocks.
Stivrins has been through a lot to get back to the Final Four with her team after a few years away.
“I’m just really excited because as Nicklin (Hames) said, we have kind of figured it out now and we’re competing harder than we have in the past few weeks,” Stivrins said. “We just love each other so much. So another day to play with this team is just everything and we’re all really looking forward to.”
Pitt dominated Nebraska in the first set, beating them 25-16. The Panthers hit .483 with 17 kills and three errors.
The Huskers hit .167, were out-of-system often and didn’t have good first touches on serves.
Pitt’s fast-paced offense was faster than NU expected, Stivrins said.
“We knew what they were gonna do, we just weren’t necessarily executing,” Stivrins said. “We were kind of guessing a little bit earlier, not doing when we should have. So we just calmed down and stuck to our game plan and that worked out for us.”
Nebraska’s serving and passing ramped up in the second set and put a lot of pressure on Pitt and opened up the Huskers’ offense more.
“I feel Pitt has a good offense when they’re in-system and it’s really fast and it’s hard to stop,” Hames said. “I thought we started thumping our servers a little more, getting them out-of-system, and then we could kind of know where the ball was going, whereas when they were in system they were setting those middles and it’s really hard to stop that type of offense.”
Once Nebraska “settled down,” as the players said after the match, they hit .440 with 13 kills and two errors in set two.
During the season, NU has emphasized being “bulletproof,” moving on to the next play and winning that point. The Huskers flexed that muscle against Pitt as they adjusted from set one, shook it off and went to work.
They’ll likely need that mentality against Wisconsin in the championship match.
Nebraska is returning to the national championship game for the first time since losing to Stanford in 2018.
They will play Wisconsin, which has beaten them twice this season and in seven straight matches. While both teams had big wins to get to this match, this rivalry on the biggest stage will bring great competition.
Part of playing a team that has been so dominant in the recent series is the mental aspect. But Stivrins said Nebraska looks completely different from when Wisconsin last played the Huskers.
This reporter would agree.
NU has stepped up and played its best volleyball when it is the most important. We will see if they can continue this post-season trend against a championship-hungry Wisconsin team and bring home Nebraska’s sixth national championship and first since 2017.
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