Oct. 11, 2006
COLUMBIA, Mo.--The No. 15 Missouri Tigers had lost 21 straight matches at home to the No. 1 Nebraska Cornhuskers coming into tonight's game, and the streak will continue as the Tigers lost 3-0. Nebraska (16-0, 8-0) held on to first place in the Big 12 and snapped Missouri's (13-5, 7-2) eleven-match home win streak and seven-match overall win streak, defeating Mizzou 30-25, 30-22, 31-29. MU dropped to third place in the Big 12 after No. 24 Oklahoma defeated Texas Tech.
"Can the Huskers" Night II saw the third-largest crowd in Mizzou volleyball history as 6,105 showed up to watch a matchup of two nationally ranked teams. Missouri committed several untimely errors that led to their defeat, Head Coach Wayne Kreklow said.
"Obviously we are disappointed. I don't think that was the Missouri volleyball team that we've seen the last few weeks," he said. "I felt that at critical times, we made errors in bunches. It comes down to simple things, and we're not going to beat good teams with two players."
Kreklow said the team looked tentative and hesitant at times, and that allowed Nebraska to control the game. Despite the loss, Kreklow said Missouri can still learn from this loss.
"There are always a lot of positives to take away. As a coach, I am more interested in what we learned," Kreklow said. "It's good to play a team that can show your flaws. We are disappointed we didn't play better, but we have to see what we learned, and that is why it is good to play a match like this."
The Tigers struggled to get a rhythm throughout the match and only hit .154 while allowing Nebraska to hit .339. Mizzou was out blocked 13.5 to seven. MU committed 22 errors on the night while Nebraska committed 15, but the Huskers also had 11 service errors while Mizzou had seven.
Jessica Vander Kooi (Hinton, Iowa) recorded her 60th career double-double and 11th of the season with 11 kills and 12 digs, but started off slow with only two kills in game one. Nicole Wilson (Lincoln, Neb.) led the Tigers with 13 kills and a .385 hitting percentage. Tatum Ailes (Bellevue, Neb.) is now tied for second place with career digs as she had 15 on the night. Lei Wang (Shanghai, China) continued to do well and narrowly missed recording a double-double. Wang had 30 assists to go along with four kills and nine digs.
Vander Kooi said had game one gone differently, the Tigers may have had a better chance to knock off the Huskers.
"Not falling off in game one, the whole night would have been different," she said. "We need to work on that and be more consistent."
Reigning Big 12 Player of the Week Jordan Larson led Nebraska with a double-double, recording 14 kills and 14 digs. Rachel Holloway had 49 assists on the night, and Sarah Pavan had 16 kills to go along with eight digs.
The Tigers started off strong in game one, taking a 5-2 lead. Backed by the raucous crowd, the Tigers forced Nebraska to take a timeout who were trailing 9-5. Missouri played with intensity and emotion, and continued to hold on to a slim lead, but could not take pull away from the talented Huskers. Missouri held on to a 17-14 despite being out hit by Nebraska .214 compared to Mizzou's .174 hitting percentage. Nebraska scored four in a row to take their first lead of the game at 18-17, but gave away the lead after committing a service error on the next play. The two teams traded points before Nebraska began to pull away. The Huskers again reeled off four points in a row, taking a 24-20 lead before a Tiger timeout. Missouri struggled in their attack, only hitting .027 to this point, and Vander Kooi had yet to make an impact with only one kill. Mizzou would only improve slightly in their attacking the rest of the game, ending with a .045 hitting percentage while Nebraska hit .295. The Tigers committed eight attacking errors and two service errors while Nebraska kept the Tigers in the game with five service errors and six attacking errors. Wilson led the Tigers with five kills on eight attempts, and Ailes had nine digs in the game.
The Tigers struggled at the beginning of game two and had a hard time slowing down the Husker attack. Still, Missouri remained in contention in the game due to some uncharacteristic errors by Nebraska. NU led 11-6, hitting .500 while Mizzou continued to struggle in their attacking game. Wilson and Wang were the only ones able to do anything offensively, hitting .500 and .667 respectively. With a 19-12 lead, Nebraska had controlled the game. Wilson helped the Tigers cut the lead to five at 22-17. That was as close as the Tigers would get and Nebraska would win game two 30-22. Wilson again led the Tigers with five kills and Vander Kooi had four kills. Missouri improved its hitting percentage by a slight margin and hit .189 in the game but allowed the Huskers to hit .438.
Down two games, Mizzou had no margin for error. The Tigers tried to keep the game close and scored three straight to tie the game at 7. The Huskers took a timeout after two straight blocks gave Missouri its first lead of the game at 8-7. Megan Wilson (Lincoln, Neb.) provided a spark and served the Tigers to five straight points. Still, Mizzou couldn't hold the lead for long, and the Huskers took an 18-14 lead. Vander Kooi helped the Tigers to tie the game at 20. The two teams traded points and the Tigers finally began to show they could match up with the top-ranked Cornhuskers. An ace by Vander Kooi gave Mizzou a 25-23 and the crowd began to come to life. Mizzou had a 28-26 lead but Nebraska tied it up and took the lead off a Larson kill. Faced with defeat, a kill by Klein tied the game at 29 to keep the game alive, but Nebraska would score the next two points to win game three 31-29 and win the match 3-0. Vander Kooi led the Tigers with five kills and six digs in the game.
The Tigers will now have the weekend off, and will travel to No. 24 Oklahoma next Wednesday to battle for second place in the Big 12. The match is set for 7 p.m.
Missouri Head Coach Wayne Kreklow
On Nebraska's depth
"They are just balanced, they just have good solid depth. I don't think we played well enough to challenge them."
On the way Missouri played against Texas compared to the way they played against Nebraska:
"The difference that I felt was that we were just very tense. When we played Texas, we just went out and played. I think they were tentative, and we got caught in rotations where we had three in the front row and we stopped playing aggressive and more passively."
Nebraska Head Coach John Cook
Opening statement
"I think it's a big win, Missouri had a chance to be in the lead in the Big 12 tonight. Our players really responded to the challenge and played a very good match today. I thought they did a super job with their composure and our game plan. It was just really a workman-like effort to win this match."
On Missouri's hostile crowd
"It's certainly a distraction. It caused us some interference, but our players are used to that, and I can tell you this, they'd much rather be in this environment then somewhere where there's nobody. Those are the places I really worry about. In a way you feed off the energy, but we came out a little wild, missing serves, and part of that was the environment and the crowd. It took us a while to settle down."
Nebraska Setter Rachel Holloway
On settling down
"After the start game, it's all about seeing what the other team is going to do and figuring out their tendencies and seeing what we have to do to counter that. Even though we do start slow, we are learning and figuring things out. We were able to turn it around, and we have done it in the past. It's just about everybody stepping up the things they have to do well and everybody was."
On their offense
"I think just in practice we've been working on spreading out the offense because Sarah [Pavan] and Jordan [Larson], as good as they are, it's hard for them to score all the points for us. That way we can have a balanced attack, and it's hard for any team to defend us, and it leaves a lot of hitters one-on-one a bunch, so that really helps the offense."
Nebraska Outside Hitter Sarah Pavan
On motivation taken from the game
"This was a big game for us tonight. Playing a top-20 team at their place and being able to win in three games is a huge deal. We're very, very happy with how we performed tonight and we have been getting better every game. Just going into the week to come, we're going to build on this and hopefully continue to get better."
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