This is what No. 1 Nebraska needed.
The unbeaten Huskers needed to piece together a dominant and decisive match that wrapped up quickly. After Michigan played as close to perfect as possible in the first set, the Huskers roared back with a vengeance to kick off Big Ten play with a 25-22, 25-10, 25-13 victory that took all of 75 minutes.
“It feels great,” setter Bergen Reilly said. “We’d kind of been waiting to have one of these games where we just make a statement, and I think we really did that tonight. We’re really happy with starting this way.
“But we know it’s 10 long weeks and one game in isn’t going to decide much. But really taking it day-by-day, game-by-game and hopefully we can keep having games like this.”
One Big Ten game down. Nineteen more to go.
Here’s what stood out in Nebraska’s win over Michigan:
WHAT I LOVED
Service pressure
From the second set on, Nebraska ratcheted up the pressure on Michigan from the service line.
In total, Nebraska had five aces by five different players — Bergen Reilly, Olivia Mauch, Teraya Sigler, Harper Murray and Campbell Flynn.
But aces aren’t the only way to measure serving pressure. Looking at how frequently Michigan overpassed tough serves back to Nebraska’s hitters who were ready for quick attacks adds more detail to the picture, too.
“We’ve been working a lot in practice just turning up the speed on our serves,” Reilly said. “We haven’t been super happy with our serving. It’s just been a little too easy, and that’s been a really big focus the last couple of days. Just trusting it and thumping it and really getting some speed on it. And it worked.”
Second set dominance
The stats from the second set are just incredible.
Nebraska collectively killed 16 of its 23 swings with three errors for a hitting percentage of .565.
Some of the offensive success: Reilly hit a perfect 1.000 after she went 2 for 2. Andi Jackson was perfect in the set, too, after terminating all three of her swings. Virginia Adriano knocked down six of her seven swings for .857.
Nebraska scored two more points from aces: one from Mauch and one from Murray.
And Michigan? After hitting. .323 in the first set, the Wolverines hit just .000 after recording five kills with five errors on 22 swings.
Friendly competition
A cute moment happened during pregame when Nebraska’s Harper Murray gave her mini volleyball to Michigan’s Serena Nyambio.
Murray, an Ann Arbor native, and Nyambio played for the same club team organization, Legacy. Nyambio is from Troy, another town near Detroit.
We’ve seen this before, like when former Husker Lindsay Krause and former Creighton Bluejay Norah Sis, who are best friends, traded mini volleyballs over the years.
WHAT I LIKED
Nebraska’s middle offense
What an offensive match for Andi Jackson and Rebekah Allick.
The two combined for 17 kills with three errors on 26 swings. Allick hit .412 while Jackson hit .778.
When Nebraska’s offense fires on all cylinders — especially with the middles — positive things are bound to happen for the Huskers.
After the first set, the two each had five kills apiece on a combined 13 swings. Allick led the way early, hitting .714, while Jackson hit .667 in the first set. Collectively, that’s a .692.
Allick and Jackson combined to kill 10 of their first 12 swings. The error that ended the run: at 22-20 when Jackson’s slide attack went into Allison Jacobs’ solo block.
Bergen Reilly’s upward movement
When Murray notched her second kill of the match in the first set, the assist from Bergen Reilly moved Reilly up in the Nebraska record books for assists. Coming into this season, Reilly had 2,674 assists. On that play, Reilly inched up to 2,926 — which moved her into No. 5 in program history in the rally-scoring era.
“It’s super cool,” Reilly said. “Being a setter at Nebraska is such an honor and getting to do it at such a high level with such amazing teammates is something that I’ll never forget. And, I don’t know, I hope I’m only getting started, too.”
Who did she pass?
None other than Dani Busboom Kelly herself.
Reilly knew after the match that she had passed Busboom Kelly, saying that she received a text from her sister telling her about the accomplishment.
“I’ll have to see how Dani feels about that,” Reilly said with a laugh.
What did Busboom Kelly say?
“I didn’t even know that,” she said. “I didn’t even know I was on a list for that.”
When she was informed she was fifth on the list, she said, “Oh. I was fifth. Pretty good. Who holds the single-season digs record?”
The answer to that question? Busboom Kelly, of course, during the national championship season in 2006.
Back when the Husker coach was known as Dani Busboom, she amassed 2,925 assists from 2003-06 — which was, at one point, the program’s record in the rally-scoring era. (The rally-scoring era began in 2001 and sets went to 30 points rather than 25 from 2001-07.)
The top four marks in the rally-scoring era are owned by No. 1 Nicklin Hames (5,086), No. 2 Kelly Hunter (4,125), No. 3 Sydney Anderson (3,332) and No. 4 Lauren Cook (3,198). The top five marks in program history, regardless of era, are Hames, No. 2 Fiona Nepo (4,824), Hunter, No. 4 Greichaly Cepero (3,987) and No. 5 Nikki Stricker (3,786).
WHAT I WAS LET DOWN BY
Michigan’s first-set offense
The Wolverines were hot offensively from the start, hitting .323 in the first set. That was the highest set from any Nebraska opponent this season.
After the Arizona match, Busboom Kelly said, “I thought our defense tonight was pretty lackluster. That’s gonna be a big focus this week. We’ve gotta be better defensively.”
Eventually, the Huskers were better defensively after dialing up some of the best serving pressure they’ve had all season. But it took a second to get there.
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Amie Just
Husker sports reporter/columnist
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