Sheldon: 3 Quick Sideouts from Nebraska's Sweep of Michigan

Nebraska served Michigan off the court, Bergen Reilly's very good week, and the evolution of NU's middle attack

The Huskers celebrate a tip from Bergen Reilly in Wednesday's win over Michigan | Amarillo Mullen

Nebraska dominated with their serving

It can be tricky to figure out the best way to measure whether or not a team is having a good serving night. 

Nebraska doesn’t feature a lineup with aggressive jump servers. They don’t pile up aces. In fact, the Huskers are last in the Big Ten in service winners per set…by a large margin.

Olivia Mauch (10) served a 5-0 run to start Game 2. | Amarillo Mullen

But ultimately, your serve is as good as the points you win on it. Using that argument, Wednesday’s super speedy sweep of Michigan (just 75 minutes!) to open Big Ten play might have been the Huskers’ best serving night of the year.

In rally scoring, you don’t expect to win the majority of the rallies your team begins by serving. If you can keep it around 45-50% you feel pretty good. Wednesday, Nebraska won 58% of the rallies in which it served. That means the Huskers put together plenty of long serving runs.

Virginia Adriano’s 4-0 service run helped the Huskers build enough cushion in Game 1 to withstand a late Michigan comeback. The second set was over about as soon as it began thanks to the 5-0 run at the start served by libero Olivia Mauch. Taylor Landfair added another 5-0 service run for good measure later in Game 2. 

In the third set, junior setter Bergen Reilly’s six straight service points turned an 8-8 tie into a breezy finale. 

Nebraska’s service pressure - or, depending how you look at it, poor Michigan passing - flipped the match on its head. The Wolverines, which entered the night hitting .311 as a team, put up a .323 mark in Game 1, the single best offensive set by an NU opponent this season. 

Michigan then hit negative over the final two sets, dropping its season hitting average a full 12 percentage points from where it entered Wednesday. It was the eighth time in 11 matches Nebraska held its opponent to below .115 attacking.

Bergen Reilly has had a good week 

As Lincoln Arneal and I mentioned in Wednesday’s “Volleyball Late” postgame pod (subscribe at patreon.com/I80Club to catch them), setter Bergen Reilly had one of her best matches of the season against the Wolverines.

Andi Jackson (15) and Bergen Reilly (2) put a block on a Michigan attempt. | Amarillo Mullen

Her numbers don’t exactly jump off the page - she had 28 assists in three sets. But she continued to display why she’s one of the best all-around setters in the country. Besides the aforementioned service run in Game 3, Reilly added five kills on seven swings, an identical line to her performance last Saturday against Arizona.

Reilly seems to have developed a recent aggressive streak in attacking on the second contact. In her last three matches, she’s attacked 22 times. She had just 32 attacks in the Huskers’ first eight matches of the year.

A setter who attacks during their front-row rotations is similar to a running quarterback. It removes the defense’s numerical advantage of having three blockers vs. two attackers during a team’s 5-1 rotations (when the setter is in the front row). They often don’t see it coming. 

With the exception of a couple of times when Reilly was forced to take an out-of-system swing on the pins, Michigan usually didn’t expect the setter’s attacks on Wednesday, leaving the donut open for Reilly to dump the ball.

Reilly moved to No. 5 on Nebraska's all-time assists chart on Wednesday. | Amarillo Mullen

It was also one of Reilly’s better performances as a distributor, helped by one of Nebraska’s best passing nights of the year. Any time the team hits nearly .400, your setter had a good night. The junior from South Dakota set a balanced attack that put two pin hitters into double figures in kills and got both middles to hit over .400.

Overall, a fantastic match for Nebraska’s captain on a night she moved into the top five on Nebraska’s all-time assists chart.

Nebraska’s middles are harder to defend this season

The Huskers probably don’t win Game 1 without their middle blockers putting on a show. Rebekah Allick and Andi Jackson combined for 10 kills on 13 attacks in the opener - a .769 attacking clip.

The swings behind those numbers are evidence of continued development of both Allick and Jackson’s individual offensive range and Nebraska’s diversification of how they use their middles within their offense.

Andi Jackson sends a kill late in the first set vs. Michigan. | Amarillo Mullen

This season, the Huskers have incorporated some new tweaks to the attacking routes the middles run, spacing them in gaps between defenders and adding what appears to be a new wrinkle where the middles hit in transition from just behind Reilly’s head.

“They were always up (to swing),” Reilly said of her middles after Wednesday’s win. “They were moving and running just different slant routes and hitting all their shots, so Michigan couldn’t get comfortable on one thing. Props to our middles. That’s something we’ve been working on. Yeah, it might look like the same route to the crowd and to the naked eye, but they’re working really hard to change up their routes, even if it’s super slightly, just to throw the block off a little.”

A few examples in the first set:

With Nebraska leading 6-5, the Huskers ran Allick out to the right pin on a slide attack in transition. That’s a route you’re more likely to see from Jackson, whose height and leap make her a devastating slide attacker. But Allick’s improved at it this year, and smartly tooled a shot off a Michigan blocker’s hands, giving the ball a little wave as it sailed back out of bounds for a point.

This is just a cool picture. | Amarillo Mullen

Maybe Allick’s most impressive swing of the night came a few points later. Freshman Teraya Sigler’s pass of a tricky Michigan serve pulled Reilly back to the 10-foot line, nearly parallel to Allick’s route to the middle of the net. It was not an ideal spot to set a middle blocker, but Reilly fired a set to the middle of the net, and Allick made an excellent adjustment to swing at a ball coming from behind her head, burying it for an 11-8 lead.

After that swing, Allick rotated out and Jackson came in. Within the first five rallies, she put away a swing in front of Reilly, then buried a transition swing that came from just behind the setter. Both attacks came too quick for the Michigan block to react to.

For the match, Allick and Jackson combined for 17 kills on .538 hitting.

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