Huskers Begin Big Ten Play With Iowa

The No. 8 Nebraska volleyball team (6-3) begins Big Ten action this week with a home-and-home series with Iowa, beginning on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. The Huskers make the trip to Iowa City on Saturday for a 7 p.m. match. The Huskers are entering their fourth year of Big Ten play and this will be the first time they’ve played the same conference opponent twice in the same week.

Media Information
Wednesday’s match will be streamed online only at BTN Plus, which fans can purchase for $9.95 for one month’s access. Fans can also listen to the action with John Baylor and Diane Mendenhall on the 25-station Husker Sports Network, including B107.3 FM in Lincoln and The Wolf 93.3 FM in Omaha. Fans inside and outside the state of Nebraska will also be able to catch the live audio feed on Huskers.com for free. Free live stats will be available at Huskers.com as well.

Series History
Nebraska leads the all-time series, 19-0. Seventeen of the 18 Husker victories have been sweeps. The only time Iowa has won a set against Nebraska was Sept. 5, 1987 in a match the Huskers won 3-1. The teams did not play from 2000 to 2010, but that changed when Nebraska joined the Big Ten. The Huskers won last year’s meeting in Lincoln on Oct. 23, 25-19, 25-21, 25-8. Kadie Rolfzen had 11 kills and 12 digs. Amber Rolfzen had eight kills, and Cecilia Hall had seven. The Huskers hit .388 in that match. Nebraska won in Iowa City on Nov. 27, 25-16, 25-18, 25-18. Kadie Rolfzen had nine kills, while Melanie Keil had six.

Last Time Out
The Nebraska volleyball team fought toe-to-toe with No. 2 Texas but came up just short in a 3-2 (23-25, 25-21, 19-25, 25-23, 8-15) thriller before 8,312 fans at the Bob Devaney Sports Center on Saturday. Kadie Rolfzen paced the Huskers (6-3) with a career-high 21 kills and 16 digs. Alicia Ostrander, coming off a strong outing off the bench against Creighton, earned the start and tallied 14 kills and four blocks. Justine Wong-Orantes recorded a career-high 29 digs with no receiving errors, and Mary Pollmiller had 40 assists, a career-high six blocks and five kills. Meghan Haggerty had nine blocks to match her season high. Texas All-American Haley Eckerman led the Longhorns with 20 kills. Amy Neal added 15 kills, and Khat Bell had seven blocks for Texas. The Huskers hit .165, while Texas hit .189, the lowest it has hit all season. Texas (8-0) entered the match with the nation’s eighth-ranked attack at .307 percent, but NU held the Longhorns well under their season average. Texas had also lost just one set all season before the Huskers topped them twice on Saturday. Nebraska outblocked Texas (15-13) and outdug the Longhorns (78-76). The Big Red also committed fewer service errors with 11 to Texas’ 13. But in the fifth set with the match on the line, Texas produced nine kills on 22 attacks with one error for a .364 hitting percentage, while Nebraska put together five kills on 23 attacks with three errors for a .087 hitting percentage.

Up Next
The Huskers visit Iowa on Saturday for a 7 p.m. match at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Noting the Huskers
• Kadie Rolfzen set career highs with 21 kills and 51 attacks against No. 2 Texas last Saturday, surpassing her previous career high of 20 kills. The 2013 All-American also had 16 digs in the match and now has three of Nebraska’s four double-doubles this season (Mary Pollmiller has the other). Rolfzen is averaging a team-high 3.45 kills per set and is second in digs with 3.03 per set. She has double-digit kills in six of her last seven matches, with the outlier a nine-kill effort against Denver on just 22 swings.
• Nebraska ranks second in the Big Ten with 2.88 blocks per set, and the Huskers’ 31 solo blocks are tied with Northwestern for the most by any Big Ten team. Meghan Haggerty is fifth in the Big Ten with 1.29 blocks per set.
• The Huskers have just one solo block against them all season. The next closest Big Ten teams are Penn State and Michigan at seven.
• The Huskers rank third in the Big Ten in digs per set (15.00). Justine Wong-Orantes (4.16 per set) leads the Big Red and ranks ninth in the conference. She is coming off a career-high 29 digs against No. 2 Texas last weekend, the most by a Husker since Kayla Banwarth’s 32 against Baylor on Nov. 18, 2009.
• Mary Pollmiller, the Huskers’ lone senior, has 326 set assists for 10.19 per set. She also adds a defensive presence at the net with 22 blocks to rank third on the team and is fourth in digs with 56.
• The Huskers have held three opponents to single-digit sets so far this season, matching last year’s season total. The Huskers have beaten Eastern Kentucky 25-7, Bakersfield 25-8 and Colgate 25-9. Nebraska held two opponents to single digits in 2012 and one in 2011.
• Nebraska is 6-0 this season when recording as many or more service aces than its opponent.
• The Huskers are 227-0 when hitting .300 or better under John Cook. Nebraska is also 369-15 (.961) when winning the first set under Cook.
• John Cook is 138-40 (.775) against ranked opponents at Nebraska. Just over one-third of Cook’s total victories at Nebraska (419) have come against ranked teams.
• Nebraska volleyball leads the nation with 207 consecutive sellouts, the longest sellout streak in the history of NCAA women’s athletics. NU owns a 191-16 record during the streak.

Scouting the Iowa Hawkeyes
The Hawkeyes enter the week 8-3 overall. All three losses have been sweeps, but two of Iowa’s three losses have come to Top 25 teams in Texas A&M and Arizona State. The other was their most recent match, a sweep at Iowa State. The Hawkeyes will be playing their home opener against the Huskers, as they’ve gone 1-3 on the road and 7-0 in neutral games so far this season. Iowa ranks third in the Big Ten in blocks (2.65 per set) and service aces (1.61 per set).

Senior outside hitter Alex Lovell is the top attacker with 128 kills and 3.56 kills per set. She led the Hawkeyes last season as well with 216 kills. Sophomore setter Alyssa Klostermann has moved into the No. 1 setter role and has a team-high 228 assists for 6.33 per set. Jess Janota has been one of the Big Ten’s best freshmen this season, ranking fifth among freshmen with 2.66 kills per set (93 total) along with 26 blocks. Junior middle blocker Mikaela Gunderson has 40 blocks for Iowa.

Iowa finished 11-21 last season and 2-18 in the Big Ten for an 11th-place finish. The Hawkeyes have six starters back though and 10 total letterwinners.

Huskers Extend Record Poll Streak to 467 Weeks
With its No. 8 ranking, Nebraska has appeared in every one of the AVCA’s 467 all-time weekly polls. NU and Stanford are the only two programs to appear in every AVCA poll, dating back to its inception in 1982. Nebraska has spent a nation-leading 420 weeks in the top 10.