Huskers Set for Weekend Series with UCLA

Friday, Sept. 8 | 8 p.m.	Bob Devaney Sports Center (Lincoln, Neb.)
#11 UCLA Bruins (5-0) at #12 Nebraska Cornhuskers (3-2)
BTN/BTN2GO.com   |   Live Audio   |   Live Stats   |   Nebraska Match Notes   |   @Huskervball

Saturday, Sept. 9 | 7 p.m.	Bob Devaney Sports Center (Lincoln, Neb.)
#11 UCLA Bruins (5-0) at #12 Nebraska Cornhuskers (3-2)
NET/BTN2GO.com   |   Live Audio   |   Live Stats   |   Nebraska Match Notes   |   @Huskervball

The No. 12 Nebraska volleyball team will play two matches against the UCLA Bruins this weekend at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Instead of hosting a second tournament this year, the Huskers will play the 11th-ranked Bruins on back-to-back nights. The last time Nebraska played a non-conference foe in back-to-back matches was at Notre Dame on Sept. 3-4 in 2004, both Husker victories.

The Huskers and Bruins will battle on Friday at 8 p.m. on BTN and BTN2GO.com. Saturday’s rematch will begin at 7 p.m. and will be televised on NET and streamed on BTN2GO.com. Husker Sports Network will broadcast all the action on HSN affiliates including 107.3 FM in Lincoln and 105.9 FM in Omaha. A live audio stream will be provided at Huskers.com and on the official Huskers app. John Baylor is in his 24th season doing play-by-play for the Husker volleyball program. Lauren Cook, a former All-America setter for the Huskers, will provide color commentary.

About the Huskers

• The Huskers are coming off a 3-0 weekend at the Ameritas Players Challenge at the Devaney Center. Nebraska rebounded from its pair of season-opening losses to Oregon and Florida by sweeping UMBC, Oral Roberts and Saint Mary’s.
• Briana Holman was named the most valuable player of the Ameritas Players Challenge with 25 kills on .525 hitting and 18 blocks in the three matches. She also received Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week.
• Mikaela Foecke and Kenzie Maloney were also all-tournament team members. Foecke posted 14 kills on a career-high .737 hitting percentage against Oral Roberts, and she averaged 3.22 kills and 2.00 digs per set on the weekend. Maloney had a career-high 22 digs against Saint Mary’s and increased her season average to 4.56 digs per set.
• Cook won his 500th all-time match as head coach at Nebraska when the Huskers beat UMBC to open the tournament.
• The Huskers hit .576 in the win over Oral Roberts, the second-best hitting percentage in school history. The only better performance was in 1984 when the Huskers hit .608 against Wichita State. Nebraska played two error-free sets in the match and sided out at 100 percent in the first and third sets.
• NU held Oral Roberts to -.064 hitting, which was the lowest hitting percentage by a Husker opponent since 2013.
• Nebraska’s first five opponents are hitting just .131 against the Huskers, which is the third-best percentage in the Big Ten.
• As a team, the Huskers are second in the Big Ten with 15.78 digs per set.
• Maloney is averaging 4.56 digs per set, which ranks third in the Big Ten.
• Holman is fifth in the Big Ten with 1.39 blocks per set.

Coaches

• John Cook, Nebraska: 18th year at Nebraska (502-67); 25th year overall (663-140)
• Michael Sealy, UCLA: eighth year at UCLA (169-65)

Series History

• The Huskers are 10-5 all-time against UCLA and 6-2 in the Cook era (since 2000).
• Nebraska and UCLA were regular opponents from 2000-2012, playing eight times including seven meetings in Cook’s first 10 seasons at Nebraska.
• The teams will end a five-year break when they meet this weekend.
• Nebraska and UCLA last played on Aug. 25, 2012, a 3-2 Husker win at the Coliseum in Lincoln. UCLA was ranked No. 1 at the time, and the fourth-ranked Huskers won the first two sets before holding on in set five for a 15-13 win. Setter Lauren Cook, who had transferred from UCLA to Nebraska in 2010, had 56 assists.

Scouting UCLA

• No. 11 UCLA is off to a 5-0 start this season and is coming off sweeps of New Mexico State and UNLV last weekend. The Bruins advanced to an NCAA regional final last year but lost all three of their All-Pac-12 players from last year - two to graduation and one to transfer.
• The Bruins are led by standout freshman Mac May. The Dubuque, Iowa native is averaging 3.78 kills per set and is hitting .279. May was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Week after the opening weekend when she recorded 18 kills and nine digs at Hawaii.
• Junior libero Zana Muno averages 5.28 digs per set and has filled the shoes of Taylor Formico, who was a two-time Pac-12 Libero of the Year for the Bruins. Muno was named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week after the opening weekend, as she recorded 34 digs at Hawaii, the fourth-most in a single match in UCLA history.
• Reily Buechler received All-Pac-12 honorable mention last season and this year is putting up 3.00 kills and 2.61 digs per set.
• UCLA is hitting .275 with 13.83 kills per set through five matches. The Bruins average 2.7 blocks per set.

Hunter Guides Young Husker Squad

• All-America setter Kelly Hunter is set for her senior season after leading NU to a national championship and a Big Ten championship the past two seasons as team captain and starting setter.
• Hunter was a second-team AVCA All-American in 2016 and an All-Big Ten setter, becoming the first Husker setter since Lauren Cook in 2012 to make the All-Big Ten team. She is a preseason All-Big Ten selection.
• Hunter was named Big Ten Setter of the Week four times last season, giving her six career awards. She set a career high with 61 assists at Penn State. She posted 11.24 assists per set to rank third in the Big Ten.
• Hunter is eighth on NU’s career assists chart with 2,936.

Foecke Poised for Bigger Role

• Junior outside hitter Mikaela Foecke is NU’s top hitter with 3.33 kills per set on .273 hitting. She received All-Big Ten honorable mention in 2016 and was an AVCA All-Region honoree.
• Foecke worked hard to become a six-rotation player entering her junior season and has been effective in that role, adding 2.83 digs per set and a .969 reception percentage.
• Foecke was a unanimous preseason All-Big Ten selection and was one of just two players to earn a unanimous selection (Minnesota setter Samantha Seliger-Swenson).
• Foecke was the NCAA Championship Most Outstanding Player in 2015 - becoming just the third freshman to earn the honor - after 19 kills on .385 hitting in the championship win against Texas. The other freshmen to win the award were Deja McClendon (Penn State, 2010) and Kerri Walsh (Stanford, 1996).

Holman Leads Husker Middle Blockers

• Senior Briana Holman guides a relatively inexperienced group of Husker middle blockers.
• Holman is averaging 2.28 kills and a team-best 1.39 blocks per set for the Huskers while hitting .322. She was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week on Sept. 5 and the MVP of the Ameritas Players Challenge after a dominating display over three matches with 25 kills and 18 blocks on .525 hitting.
• Holman earned AVCA All-Region honors for the third time in her career last season and received All-Big Ten honorable mention.
• Holman was a first-team AVCA All-American at LSU in 2014 with 3.94 kills and 1.47 blocks per set. She was a two-time All-SEC performer for the Tigers and represented the U.S. Collegiate National Team at the World University Games in South Korea in July 2015.

Huskers Turn to Freshmen for Instant Impact

• With five true freshmen and two redshirt freshmen on the roster, the Huskers needed some new talent to step up in a big way in 2017, and so far that has happened.
• Redshirt freshman middle blocker Lauren Stivrins is averaging 2.00 kills and 0.78 blocks per set.
• Redshirt freshman setter Hunter Atherton has made two starts and played in four matches with an average of 7.44 assists and 2.17 digs per set. Atherton also has five service aces, second-most on the team.
• Freshman outside hitter Jazz Sweet had an outstanding debut with 14 kills on .375 hitting against Oregon and 16 kills on .323 hitting at Florida. Sweet is second on the team in kills at 2.61 per set and is hitting .343. She is also second in blocks at 0.83 per set.
• Freshman outside hitter Anezka Szabo, who plays the same right-side hitter position as Sweet, tallied 10 kills on .400 hitting against Saint Mary’s.

Huskers Ranked No. 12 in AVCA Coaches Poll

• Nebraska is ranked No. 12 in this week’s AVCA Coaches Poll.
• The Huskers have been ranked No. 1 in 98 all-time polls, the most in NCAA history.
• The Huskers have been ranked in the top 10 a total of 458 times, which is also the most in NCAA history.
• Nebraska has appeared in all 513 AVCA Coaches Polls since it was established in 1982. Nebraska and Stanford are the only two programs to be ranked in every poll all-time.

Cook Adds to Legacy; Will Join AVCA Hall of Fame in December

• Nebraska head coach John Cook is in his 18th season as the Nebraska volleyball head coach in 2017. He has led the Huskers to three national championships, seven final fours, 11 conference championships and 15 top-10 final rankings since 2000. Cook has 663 career wins and is one of the all-time winningest coaches in NCAA history.
• Since taking over the program in 2000, Cook has led the Huskers to a nation-leading .882 win percentage in that time (502-67).
• Under Cook, the Huskers have achieved 49 AVCA All-Americans and 19 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, both among the best in the nation. He is a two-time AVCA National Coach of the Year, earning the prestigious honor in 2000 and 2005, and a six-time conference coach of the year, including Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2016, his first Big Ten honor with the Huskers in their Big Ten era (2011-present).
• Cook was named the AVCA North Region Coach of the Year this season, his fifth career regional coaching honor and fourth while at Nebraska.
• Cook is one of only four active coaches - and one of six all-time - to be a two-time AVCA National Coach of the Year and was honored in 2008 by USA Volleyball, receiving its All-Time Great Coach Award.
• Cook will be inducted into the AVCA Hall of Fame in December in Kansas City, Missouri. Cook will join former Husker volleyball coach Terry Pettit in the hall.

Husker Fans Set Attendance Standard Once Again

• Nebraska fans led the nation in attendance for a fourth straight season as their 8,210 average per match in 2016 established a new NCAA attendance record, topping its 2015 average of 8,206.
• The Huskers’ total attendance of 155,986 in 19 home matches also set a school record.
• In 2013, the Huskers led the nation in attendance (8,175) for the first time since 1992, ending Hawaii’s 21-year reign as the national leader.
• The Huskers repeated as attendance champions in 2014 with 8,083 fans per match, which included a school-record 8,585 fans at the Oct. 3 win against Penn State.
• Nebraska has ranked in the top three nationally in attendance every season since 1990 (27 straight seasons).
• The Huskers have sold out every regular-season match since 2001, a streak of 222 consecutive matches, the longest sellout streak in the history of NCAA women’s athletics.
• The Devaney Center has hosted the three largest regular-season crowds in NCAA history and seven of the 10 largest.

Huskers Get Depth From Former Husker Women’s Basketball Player Allie Havers

• The Huskers gained some depth at middle blocker when former Husker women’s basketball player Allie Havers joined the team in the spring.
• Havers, a 6-5 native of Mattawan, Michigan, has one season of eligibility to play volleyball, a sport she excelled at in high school. Havers was a first-team Class A all-state player in Michigan in 2012 and a finalist for Michigan’s Miss Volleyball in 2013.
• On the Nebraska women’s basketball team, Havers closed her career having played in 125 games with 50 starts. She ranked among the top 50 career scorers (720 points) and top 25 career rebounders (541) in Husker history.

Cook’s Coaching Tree Continues to Grow

• Nebraska head coach John Cook’s assistant coaches have a great track record of moving on to become head coaches.
• After the 2016 season, Nebraska assistants Chris Tamas and Dani Busboom Kelly both accepted high-level Division I head coaching jobs. Busboom Kelly became the head coach at Louisville, while Tamas accepted the head coaching job at Big Ten foe Illinois.
• Seven assistants under Cook have become head coaches following their time on Cook’s Nebraska staff: Craig Skinner (Kentucky), Lee Maes (Virginia), Lizzy Stemke (Georgia), Dan Conners (UC Davis), Dan Meske (Augustana, Associate Head Coach at Louisville), Busboom Kelly and Tamas.
• In the last seven years, five of Cook’s Husker assistants have become head coaches.

New Players, New Coaches

• Not only are six of the 15 Husker players new to the program, so are the two Husker assistant coaches. Former Husker and U.S. Olympic libero Kayla Banwarth, and former Long Beach State men’s associate head coach Tyler Hildebrand are on the Husker bench this year.
• Hildebrand joined the Nebraska coaching staff as an assistant in February of 2017. Hildebrand came to Nebraska after five seasons on the coaching staff of the Long Beach State men’s volleyball program, including two seasons as associate head coach. In 2017, he was the AVCA Division I-II Men’s National Assistant Coach of the Year. A former All-American at Long Beach State, Hildebrand was the top assistant there from 2013-15 after a decorated playing career on the U.S. Men’s National Team. He is a former setter who coordinated both the offense and the blocking defense at Long Beach State at one point in his career.
• Banwarth joined the Nebraska volleyball coaching staff as an assistant in January of 2017. Banwarth completed an illustrious playing career for the Huskers in 2010 before embarking on a professional playing career that saw her win an Olympic bronze medal with the U.S. National Team, as well as an FIVB World Championship. Banwarth is relatively new to the coaching profession after finishing her professional career with the U.S. National Team at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. A U.S. National Team libero since 2011, Banwarth spent two years as a volunteer assistant coach for the Pepperdine men’s volleyball team.