NCAA Women
Lee Feinswog
December 14, 2023
TAMPA — All that remained was the waiting, to see if we will have a rematch of the 2021 five-set epic NCAA championship match between Wisconsin and Nebraska.
Top-seeded Nebraska did its part, completely overpowering No. 4 Pittsburgh on Thursday night in Amalie Arena in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship national semifinals.
Sunday, the Huskers (33-1) will play the winner of the later match between No. 3 Wisconsin and No. 7 Texas after dismantling Pittsburgh 25-20, 25-23, 25-17.
Big Ten-champion Nebraska was led by Harper Murray, the freshman outside hitter who had 13 kills, five digs and two blocks. Merritt Beason added eight kills but hit .038 to go with two assists, four aces, four digs and five blocks.
“Tonight is a great win for us, but at the end of the day, Sunday is our goal,” Murray said. “We just have to stay focused on that and do everything we can to prepare for that match.”
Ally Batenhorst also had eight kills and added two digs and four blocks, one solo. The Nebraska middles were errorless in a match in which the Huskers battled uphill to hit .245. Andi Jackson had five kills with no errors in nine swings, a dig and four blocks, one solo, and Bekka Allick had four kills with no errors in seven attacks to go with an assist and 10 blocks, three solo. Allick, the sophom*ore playing for her hometown team, had 12 blocks in Nebraska’s regional-final win over Arkansas.
Setter Bergen Reilly had a kill in two errorless tries, 31 assists and three digs. Lexi Rodriguez had 14 digs, four assists and an ace.
Nebraska had 15 blocks to Pitt’s eight.
“I thought it was a great effort on our part. Pittsburgh is a very good team,” Nebraska coach John Cook said. “Just watching video on them, they had our respect. I thought this would be a really, really tough match, and I knew we’d have to play great to win.”
But I thought our team — we talked about winning some close points. There were some ugly volleyball. We found a couple ways to win a couple points out of that, and I just thought our serving and blocking and defense really put some pressure on Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh, the ACC co-champion, finished its season 29-5 after losing in the national semifinals for the third year in a row. When the Panthers and Louisville made it this far in 2021, it was the first time an ACC school played in the final four.
Pitt struggled offensively all match and hit .137. Olivia Babco*ck led with 12 kills, an ace, four digs and eight blocks. Torrey Stafford had 10 kills but hit .094. She had an assist and six digs. Valeria Vazquez Gomez had seven kills and eight digs.
The middles, Emma Monks, who had seven blocks, and Chiamaka Nwokolo, had three kills each. Setter Rachel Fairbanks had a kill in two errorless tries, 29 assists and nine digs.
Both teams were abysmal offensively in the first set, but the way Nebraska was blocking it didn’t need an attack.
Pitt hit an even .000 with 13 kills and 13 errors in 37 attacks as Nebraska had eight blocks. The Huskers, struggling to stay in the positive the first half of the set, finished at .152 with nine kills and four errors in 33 swings.
The only Pitt players hitting positive in the first set were Babco*ck (5-4-12) and Vazquez Gomez (2-1-4). Beason and Murray had four kills each for Nebraska and Batenhorst had the other to go with two errors in 10 attacks.
The set was tied 9-9 and Pitt was as close as 17-15 before the Huskers pulled away.
Nebraska never trailed in a second set that was last tied at 4-4. The Huskers were up 21-16 before Pitt made a late charge, pulling to 24-23 on kills by Babco*ck and Stafford and a block by Babco*ck and Monks of Beason. But Vazquez Gomez served just long to give Nebraska a 2-0 lead.
“We looked frantic in transition. We gave them easy points. Then I thought we were flipping it in the second set, and we were the ones winning the emotional points,” Pitt coach Dan Fisher said. “It would have been nice to get that second set.
Nebraska hit .407 in the third set with 15 kills and four errors in 27 attacks. That included Allick getting three kills on four errorless attacks and three of her blocks, one solo.
“I thought in the second set, we started to look a little bit more like ourselves. We were battling. The volleyball was better on both sides,” Fisher said. “Then in the fourth set, we just served way too many balls at Lexi and that really helped their offense going out and they got really comfortable.”
“You look at the first game, neither team did not hit well,” Cook said. “As the match went on, it got more and more offensive and the numbers came up.
“But defense takes a lot of energy and emotion, and eventually that starts tapering off as the match goes on. But I’m looking here, we hit .400 in game three against the first or second best team in the country, but their numbers came up, too. Overall we did a really good job of holding them down and containing them. We never let them get really hot. Babco*ck in game two got a couple nice big kills, but again, we made some great adjustments and shut them down.”
Nebraska beat Pitt in four in the 2021 national semifinals before losing to Wisconsin in an epic five-set match. The Huskers, who won the 2015 and 2017 titles, also lost in the 2018 national-championship match to Stanford.
