Nebraska Rebounds, Beats Minnesota on the Road to Finish Regular Season 28-1

Nebraska 3 Minnesota 1 (25-19, 25-18, 21-25, 25-23)

Tonight’s match was a completely different story than last night’s match. You could tell this team was actually was playing for something and wanted this win tonight. It was nice to see how they could respond after such a disappointing loss.

Nebraska had control for much of the match. The third set is where they kind of let up on the gas, but they found their momentum again right at the beginning of the fourth.

You can tell how much grit that Minnesota team has and the drive they have to get into the NCAA Tournament. Going down two sets can be a killer for most teams, but Minnesota dug deep and never gave up.

It was nice to see the Huskers get a win to end the regular season. I think if we would’ve dropped this match, it really would’ve been a mental killer. They would’ve also probably lost their #1 seed as well which would not bode well for them.

Offensively, tonight, Merritt Beason showed us all why she is in the running for B1G Player of the Year. She tied her season high of 21 kills and hit .302 on the night.

I may be biased, and hate Wisconsin, but I think she definitely deserves that player of the year award. The Huskers wouldn’t be this strong without her. She is a game changer for us.

Ally Batenhorst had another good night. She adds 13 kills, along with Harper Murray, and hit .235 for the match. She was one of the only players to show up last night against Wisconsin and she kept it rolling tonight in Minnesota.

Harper Murray and Bergen Reilly combined for 31 of the 71 total digs on the night. They had almost half of the teams digs between the two of them.

Bekka Allick is an electric player and everyone in the building knows she is on the court when she has one of her amazing blocks followed by her tough celebrations. Tonight, she had the team high 10 blocks and a lot of them came during the last set.

One of my favorite things is watching our DS/Libero’s chase balls down anywhere and everywhere every match.

Choboy and Rodriguez are just so fun to watch and continue to work hard and get better every single match. They are a big reason why our defense is one of the best in the nation.

Looking at the hitting percentage by set is a little disappointing to be honest. They started off, in set one, hitting .298 and followed that up with .406 in set two. Sets three and four were worse. .167 in set three and .118 in set four.

The Huskers will need to be more consistent from set to set to have lots of success late in the tournament. Teams like Wisconsin and Texas won’t let them have off sets like this. They will capitalize on these slumps that Nebraska has.

While they still ended the night hitting .235 overall, they will need to look to keep that hitting percentage up and focus on keeping those errors to a minimum going into post season.

With that 3-1 victory, the regular season has finally concluded after starting in late August. Tomorrow, Sunday, November 26th, is the NCAA Tournament Selection Show. It starts at 5:00pm CST and will be televised on ESPN.

We will find out where we will be seated in the tournament and who we will be playing first. Hopefully, the Huskers will be playing all the way through December 17th when a National Champion will be crowned.

NCAA Tournament Schedule:

First and second rounds: Thursday-Friday, November 30th-December 1st OR Saturday-Sunday, December 2nd-3rd

Regionals: Thursday, December 7th and Saturday, December 9th

Semifinals: Thursday, December 14th

National Championship: Sunday, November 17th on ABC