Coming into the Husker Invite, Missouri State clearly was the best opponent that Nebraska would face over the weekend. In fact you could make a case it was the best opponent Nebraska would face between the Husker Invite AND the Ameritas Players Challenge. It isn’t a vintage Missouri State team, where they were good enough to get an At-Large bid to the NCAA tournament in 2015 and 2016. No, this team will have to get the automatic bid as winners of the Missouri Valley. But they are still dangerous, being picked 2nd in that conference in the pre-season behind Northern Iowa.
Instead, it turned out to be Nebraska’s most lopsided curb stomping of an opponent this year. And while it was even midway through the first set thanks mainly to Nebraska service errors, the remainder of the match was illustrative of how talented this Husker group is, and how dominating they can be.
Again, Nebraska started out a little sluggish in the 1st set, despite an initial lead of 4-0. Service errors allowed the Bears to crawl back into the set and after several lead changes, Mo State had closed to within 19 – 21. That would be the last time they would be within striking distance, as a Big Red Tsunami would overwhelm the opposition by a 54 – 16 count the remainder of the match.
I’m not sure when the Bears gave up their will to live, but whatever spark they may have had, it was extinguished after intermission early into the 3rd set by one Callie Schwartzenbach. She had several blocks at the beginning of the set and added some kills on top of that, causing a young Missouri State team to curl up and waste away. It was a performance so dominant that the radio announcers where laughing at how much Callie was in the head of the Missouri State players. The Huskers were in a rhythm on offense and the combination resulted in a what? WHAT? 3rd set score of 25 – 4.
The addition of Lexi Sun has elevated the play of the team to another level. The passing was excellent allowing Hames to set in system and distribute to all the Four Horseman (Foecke, Sweet, the Middles, and Sun) effectively leading to an uber efficient offense. The 3rd set score was incredible, but an even more absurd stat was the number of attack errors by the Big Red. Out of 84 swings, Nebraska had only FOUR attack errors with 46 kills. That’s a .500 hitting percentage for the entire match. As Jim Rome would say, REEE-diculous. The blocking has appeared in a major way in the last two matches (after Coach Cook made it an area of concern after the Central Michigan match) with Schwartzenbach leading the way with 13 and 9. Maloney has rounded into form and is playing at a high level. In fact, Maloney was voted tournament MVP.
The only issue to complain about is the number of service errors and most of them occurred in the first set. But the despite the errors, the serve was still stressing the Bears, causing them to be out of system much of the night and leading to attack errors.
As mentioned previously, Maloney was named Husker Invite MVP, with Foecke, Stivrins, and Hames also making the all-tournament team. A hearty congratulations to all.
The elevated play comes at an opportune time since B1G play is next. The usual suspects are expected to contend for the league title (Nebraska, The Cult that is Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota) but there are some different faces joining in the race. Illinois appears to be legitimate since they have beat several ranked teams in the non-conference schedule including Creighton in four sets on Saturday. They are unbeaten. Purdue and Michigan are also unbeaten, but both remain somewhat unknown. Purdue has beaten Louisville in 5, and a ranked Alabama team in straight sets, but has not played anyone in the top 15.
Which brings us to the next opponent for the Big Red. Michigan has not played a ranked opponent, but they also had not dropped a set until today when Notre Dame was able to push them to 4 at South Bend. That’s 33-1 record in sets in non-conference play.
Nationally, Stanford swept Texas in the home and home (3-0 at Palo Alto, 3-1 at Austin) so Nebraska will likely move up to the 3 ranking. Getting back to B1G play, before this weekend, I would have thought that the winner of the conference would have 3 to 4 losses. That doesn’t happen often, in fact the last time a conference champ had more than 2 losses was in 2011 when Nebraska won with a 17-3 record followed by three teams at 16-4. However, based on play this weekend with the addition of Lexi Sun, the Big Red has the potential to go 18-2 or 19-1. And in this conference, that should earn a top 4 seed for the tournament.