Nebraska Volleyball: Path to Final Four a little more clear

Nebraska Volleyball have swept its way through this year’s NCAA Tournament thus far and in shocking fashion, they’ll now face Oregon in the Elite Eight and not the two-seeded Minnesota Gophers.

Nebraska volleyball‘s sweep over Kentucky was enough to get me fired up for the rest of the evening, but then hours later, seeing the 15th-seeded Oregon Ducks knock off Minnesota, the host team throughout the ENTIRE tournament, was enough for me not to sleep at all tonight.

Before we dive more into that, let’s rewind a bit to Nebraska’s win over Kentucky because it was a fantastic match. This was a rematch of last year’s Elite Eight, where Nebraska went into Lexington and reigned supreme to advance to the Final Four.

This year, the stakes weren’t AS high with this being a Sweet 16 match, but the results were the same with Nebraska winning. Not only did Nebraska win, but they made Kentucky look downright foolish.

I felt confident about Nebraska’s chances in this one simply because the Big Ten is on a whole other level than the SEC when it comes to volleyball. Nebraska was playing a top ten team nearly every week in the regular season while Kentucky’s toughest opponents were Florida and Missouri. Other than that, they didn’t face many tough teams.

Nebraska proved that to be true, dominating the Wildcats in the first set. While they allowed Kentucky to make a match of it in sets two and three, the Huskers ultimately took both of them. The most impressive part from this one was when Kentucky led 18-11 in the third set and Nebraska came back to not only tie it, but win it outright. They swept the tenth seeded team in the tournament on the highest of stages, so why shouldn’t Husker fans be amped right now?

As I touched on earlier, Nebraska will not be facing who they thought they would. Minnesota, who was awarded the two-seed in this year’s tournament after losing just one Big Ten match all season, fell to Oregon in four sets. I’m still in shock to be honest with you.

The Gophers had the luxury of the NCAA Tournament being in their own backyard this year. That meant they just had to get there and then they’d have home field advantage and could sleep in their own beds throughout, another big time advantage over the opposition. It really did seem like Minnesota’s year, but they were clearly looking ahead to Nebraska rather than focusing on the Ducks.

Now, the chances of Nebraska getting to their fourth straight Final Four just skyrocketed. I’m not going to take anything away from Oregon, but Minnesota falling was big for many reasons. Yes, they had home field advantage, but the biggest reason is that they defeated Nebraska both times the two met this year. Clearly the Gophers were in Nebraska’s head and now we don’t have to worry about that.

Nebraska and Oregon played earlier this season, with Nebraska sweeping the Ducks in Lincoln in the second match of 2018. That means nothing though, as Florida beat Nebraska last year in the regular season and Nebraska came back to beat them in the championship game. Throw regular season match-ups out the window when it comes to tournament play in college volleyball.

At the end of the day, Nebraska might be the higher seed now, but don’t take Oregon lightly. They just knocked off the second best team in all of college volleyball and did so pretty convincingly. It won’t be a cakewalk to the Final Four for the Cornhuskers, but I’m definitely feeling much better now than had it been against the hometown Gophers.

GO BIG RED!