Huskers Host Northwestern on "Pink Night"

The No. 13 Nebraska volleyball team returns to the Bob Devaney Sports Center this week for a pair of Big Ten matches, beginning with a Wednesday match against Northwestern at 7 p.m. Wednesday’s match will be the Huskers’ annual breast cancer awareness “Pink Night.”

Media Information
Wednesday’s match will air live on NET and will stream online with a BTN Plus subscription. Fans can 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. Live stats will be available at Huskers.com as well.

Series History
The Huskers own a 7-1 lead in the all-time series with Northwestern. Nebraska has won three straight matches against the Wildcats after dropping the first meeting between the schools as Big Ten foes on Nov. 26, 2011, 3-1 in Evanston, Ill. Nebraska has never lost to Northwestern at home. As a head coach, John Cook is 18-1 all-time against Northwestern and is 4-1 as the Nebraska head coach. The Huskers won both matches last season, 3-1 in Evanston (25-16, 20-25, 25-21, 25-20) on Sept. 27 and 3-2 (21-25, 25-17, 21-25, 25-17, 15-13) in Lincoln on Nov. 2.

Last Time Out
The Husker volleyball team fell 3-0 at Michigan on Sunday, 19-25, 30-32, 21-25. The Huskers dropped to 10-5 overall and 4-2 in the Big Ten, while Michigan improved to 8-8 with a 3-3 Big Ten record. Alicia Ostrander had a team-high 12 kills. Mary Pollmiller had 35 assists, and Annika Albrecht had a team-best 12 digs. Michigan’s Abby Cole had 19 kills, and Adeja Lambert had 13 and Caroline Knop 12. Lexi Dannemiller had 46 set assists, and Tiffany Morales had 17 digs. Michigan outhit the Huskers .331 to 222 and outdug them 57-46. Nebraska had an 8-3 edge in blocks.

The Michigan loss came after a hard-fought victory at Michigan State on Friday in East Lansing, the first Husker victory at MSU since 2011. The Huskers tallied the 3-1 (25-20, 25-18, 22-25, 25-23) win over the Spartans, the 1,200th win in school history, which ranks second all-time in the NCAA. Kadie Rolfzen had her fourth double-double of the season with 16 kills and 12 digs. Alicia Ostrander added 12 kills, and Amber Rolfzen had 10 kills. Meghan Haggerty had five kills and four blocks, and Kira Larson had a career-high four kills and three blocks in her first career start. Mary Pollmiller had 43 assists, her most since Sept. 6 against Bakersfield, and Justine Wong-Orantes led four Huskers in double-digit digs with 19. Nebraska hit .190 for the match but held Michigan State to a .152 clip. The Huskers outblocked the Spartans 8-6 and outdug them 66-61. The Huskers had eight service aces, their second-best output this season.

Up Next
Nebraska hosts No. 15 Illinois on Saturday at 3 p.m. That match will stream live on ESPN3 and will be delayed on ESPN2 on Sunday, Oct. 19 at Noon (CT).

Noting the Huskers
• Kadie Rolfzen leads the Huskers with 3.56 kills per set and ranks fifth in the Big Ten. In conference play, she is producing 3.71 kills per set. The 2013 third-team AVCA All-American has four of Nebraska’s six double-doubles this year and has led Nebraska in kills in eight of the past 13 matches.
• Alicia Ostrander is second on the team with 2.86 kills per set and is averaging 2.95 kills per set in Big Ten play. Ostrander has double-digit kills in six of the last seven matches dating back to the Texas match on Sept. 20.
• Nebraska ranks second in the Big Ten with 2.80 blocks per set. The Huskers had a season-high 18 against Ohio State on Oct. 4, matching the most since Sept. 11, 2010 when NU had 19 blocks against Illinois. Meghan Haggerty is fifth in the Big Ten with 1.25 blocks per set.
• Amber Rolfzen is second on the team with 112 total kills per set and is averaging 2.38 kills per set in Big Ten play with a .304 hitting percentage.
• Justine Wong-Orantes leads the Big Red in digs with 3.93 per set and ranks eighth in the conference. She had a career-high 29 digs against No. 2 Texas on Sept. 20, the most by a Husker since Kayla Banwarth’s 32 against Baylor on Nov. 18, 2009.
• Mary Pollmiller, the Huskers’ lone senior, has 550 set assists for 10.19 per set. She also adds a defensive presence at the net with 39 blocks to rank second on the team.
• The Huskers are 229-0 when hitting .300 or better under John Cook.
• Nebraska is 372-16 when winning the first set under Cook.
• John Cook is 139-40 (.777) against ranked opponents at Nebraska. Just over one-third of Cook’s total victories at Nebraska (423) have come against ranked teams.
• Nebraska volleyball leads the nation with 210 consecutive sellouts, the longest sellout streak in the history of NCAA women’s athletics. NU owns a 193-17 record during the streak.

Scouting the Northwestern Wildcats
Northwestern is 13-4 overall and 3-3 in the Big Ten. The Wildcats started the year 12-1 but have lost three of their last four, including to Penn State (3-0) and Ohio State (3-1) on the road last week. The Wildcats were ranked 24th in last week’s AVCA Top 25 Poll before dropping out this week after their two losses. Northwestern is in the midst of a four-match road swing, as they also visit Iowa on Saturday. Symone Abbott leads the team with 3.48 kills per set. Taylor Tashima has 10.73 assists per set to rank fifth in the Big Ten, while Caroline Niedospial is averaging 5.19 digs per set in conference play to lead the Big Ten. In conference matches only, Maddie Slater has the league’s best hitting percentage at .456 with 32 kills on 57 swings.

Three Former Huskers Capture Gold With Team USA
Team USA - with former Huskers Kayla Banwarth, Jordan Larson-Burbach and Kelsey Robinson - beat China 3-1 (27-25, 25-20, 16-25, 26-24) on Oct. 12 to win the FIVB World Championship in Italy. The U.S. Women had never before won gold at any of the three major international volleyball events: World Championship, World Cup or Olympic Games. Larson-Burbach was one of the team’s top hitters throughout the tournament, while Banwarth captured the starting libero role and never relinquished it. Robinson, one of the team’s youngest players, was a key contributor in the early rounds of the tournament.

Huskers Extend Record Poll Streak to 470 Weeks
Nebraska has appeared in every one of the AVCA’s 470 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 422 weeks in the top 10.

Huskers’ Lone Senior Among the Nation’s Best
Tri-captain Mary Pollmiller is Nebraska’s lone senior in 2014. The Huskers may only have one senior, but Pollmiller is one of the nation’s top setters. She is in her second season at Nebraska after spending her first two years at Tennessee in 2011 and 2012. Pollmiller was the 2011 SEC Freshman of the Year, and she has earned honorable-mention AVCA All-America accolades twice in her career, including last season (also in 2011). Pollmiller owns 4,569 career assists, a total that ranks fourth nationally. Three of the nation’s top-four active players in career assists are Big Ten Conference setters.