Hoosier fans packed into a sold-out Wilkinson Hall in hopes of seeing Indiana volleyball knock off the No. 1 team in the land, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Instead, Nebraska did as they always do and knocked off Indiana in a three-set sweep over Steve Aird’s young squad.
Nebraska entered the night 15-0 on the year, with 12 sweeps, only losing a total of three sets on the season. Nebraska is truly a team in a tier of its own, and Indiana found that out the hard way losing set one 25-15, set two 25-19 and set three 25-19 as well. Set three was the most consistently competitive set, but the Hoosiers were unable to maintain success, and Nebraska pulled away late in the set.
On the outside it would appear that this loss was a crushing defeat for Indiana, as they couldn’t even take a set away from Nebraska, but in reality, Indiana showed why they aren’t a team to be taken lightly.
“The other thing that everyone is missing is the fact that we’re legit now and they’re not going to overlook us,” Aird said. “Whenever we’ve taken a game off Nebraska in the past, we haven’t been very good”.
Aird knows that his team is in the right spot because they aren’t a team that Nebraska can brush past. Nebraska had lots of respect for what Indiana is, and because of this, Nebraska gave Indiana its A-game. Indiana probably played a bit below this bar for its standard, but still had lots of highlights and success in this defeat.
Indiana isn’t in the tier with the top teams, but they aren’t where they used to be before the Steve Aird era either. This was Indiana’s first ranked-on-ranked battle at home in program history. The team is seeing the right improvement, and the results will follow eventually. Indiana also plays five sophomores and a freshman. These players are going to be key pieces of the Hoosiers future, but it is expected for them to make mistakes in games.
Mistakes were indeed made in this game as Indiana had 13 service errors.
“We missed a bunch of service, but we had to,” Aird said. “Because we weren’t going to lob serves and have a lot of them just bounce balls all over the gym. So I wanted to muddy it up, and obviously we had to execute better, but I didn’t care about any of the missed serves”.
Aird came into this game knowing that its team was fighting a losing battle. Nebraska has won 146 straight sets when they are the first team to score 20, and that streak didn’t end this game. Indiana was outclassed, but it doesn’t mean they don’t belong. They showed that they are a team that can fight with Nebraska.
Indiana shot .282, which is the highest percentage a team had shot against Nebraska all season. They may not have taken them to an additional set, but they challenged the best team in the nation. Indiana is a young and fiery team, who has lots of room to improve, but they aren’t off schedule. This team has time together and Aird is growing something special at Indiana.
Indiana will now move on to face USC at home on Sunday afternoon. The Hoosiers face off against the Trojans in a game where Indiana needs to bounce-back.
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