A sour end to a special season.
Nebraska volleyball fell to Texas in straight sets Saturday: 25-22, 14, 11. The loss leaves Nebraska as national runner-up for the sixth time in program history and third time in the last six seasons.
The Longhorns are back-to-back national champions.
Texas started off strong with a 4-0 run. Nebraska knotted things up at 6-6 to begin a back-and-forth first set that came down to the final three points, all won by the Longhorns.
Set two continued the back-and-forth nature until, with Nebraska up 10-7, the wheels didn’t just come off, they ceased to exist.
Texas used four straight Asjia O’Neal aces as part of an 11-0 run to run away with the set. The dismantling continued in the third as Big Red was held to their lowest points in a set all season.
NU hit a season-low .013 for the match while Texas smashed 38 kills on .264 hitting.
Harper Murray had a team-high seven kills as one of just three Huskers with a positive hitting percentage. The other two were middles Bekka Allick and Andi Jackson, who combined for just seven kills on 16 attacks.
Two Huskers made the Final Four All-Tournament team: Bekka Allick and Merritt Beason.
Nebraska, with no seniors on the team, finishes the season at 33-2.
Post-Match Notes
- Nebraska finished as the NCAA runner-up for the sixth time in program history. The Huskers have a 5-6 record in the national championship match.
- The Huskers lost to Texas in an NCAA Final for the first time. Nebraska had won the previous two national championship matches between the programs in 1995 and 2015.
- NU ended its season with a 33-2 record. The Huskers’ .943 winning percentage ranked fourth in school history and was the highest since the 2006 season.
- Nebraska fell to 130-37 all-time in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskers rank second in NCAA history in postseason wins and winning percentage (.778).
- John Cook fell to 89-20 in the NCAA Tournament as Nebraska’s head coach. He dropped to 97-25 in his NCAA Tournament career. Cook ranks second all-time in career NCAA Tournament victories and NCAA Tournament wins at one school.
- Texas had 12 service aces in the match, the most by any Husker opponent in the rally-scoring era (since 2001) and the first time a Nebraska opponent has had more than 10 aces in the rally-scoring era.
- UT had seven aces in set two, which one shy of the most aces Nebraska had allowed in an entire match.
- Nebraska hit .013 in the match, the lowest mark of the season for the Huskers. The previous low was a .130 attack percentage in a win against No. 1 Wisconsin on Oct. 21.
- The Huskers’ 20 kills were a season low, nine fewer than Nebraska had against Omaha in the outdoor match at Memorial Stadium on Aug. 30.
- Merritt Beason finished with 455 kills this season. That total ranked ninth at Nebraska in the rally-scoring era (since 2001). Beason is just the sixth Husker to have 450 kills in a season during the rally-scoring era.
- Beason finished with 455 kills, 248 digs and 106 blocks. She is just the fourth Huskers in the rally-scoring era (since 2001) to have 400 kills, 200 digs and 100 blocks in a season and the first since Kadie Rolfzen in 2015.
- Andi Jackson finished with a .399 attack percentage in her freshman season. That is the highest mark by a freshman in school history, eclipsing the previous record of .388 by Karen Dahlgren in 1983.
- Jackson’s .399 attack percentage is the 10th-best all-time single-season mark at Nebraska and the seventh-best during the rally-scoring era (since 2001).