Sheldon: Nebraska's Offense is Historically Good

The Huskers’ attack is not only on pace to smash the school record, it puts Nebraska in elite company in recent college history.

Harper Murray and Nebraska are having the best offensive season in school history. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Just four points into last Saturday’s match between Nebraska and Minnesota, Keegan Cook had seen enough.

A first-ball sideout from Virginia Adriano, two transition kills from Andi Jackson, and another out-of-system blast from Adriano had Nebraska up 4-0 on Cook’s Gophers. The Minnesota coach quickly used a precious timeout as his partisan crowd of 5,312 at the Maturi Pavilion was shushed into a drowsy torpor.

HAMMERRRRR 🔨

nasty swing from @aandijackson! pic.twitter.com/YXMI7Xz1Kc

— Nebraska Volleyball (@HuskerVB) November 8, 2025

The weekend, which ended with Nebraska’s sweep of Minnesota, the Huskers’ 15th consecutive win by the minimum three sets, was the latest in what has become a historic run through Big Ten play. After hitting a combined .458 in wins over Illinois and Minnesota, NU’s attack percentage now stands at .348, the top mark in the nation this year.

Husker players and coaches credit a number of factors to the improvement of the offense, which hit a respectable .284 last season, including the continued development of junior setter Bergen Reilly, the increasing involvement of Nebraska’s middle blockers, and new head coach Dani Busboom Kelly’s empowerment of her attackers to ‘cut it loose’ even when scoring conditions are less than ideal.

“I think we were doing a really good job of also finding really good ways to score,” senior outside hitter Taylor Landfair said Tuesday. “And honestly, find more innovative ways to score than just like a roll shot or a tip down the line or whatever.”

Landfair had 11 kills against Minnesota last week, hitting .550 in the match. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Landfair epitomizes the growth of Nebraska’s attackers. The senior, who turns 24 this week, is enjoying the most efficient season of her college career, even surpassing her 2022 campaign at Minnesota, when she was named Big Ten Player of the Year. Landfair is hitting a career-best .330 - an exceptional mark for an outside hitter - boosted by a stretch in which she’s hit .475 in NU’s last eight matches, topped by 11 kills without an error on 20 attempts against her old team last week.

But Nebraska’s dynamic offense has come without an obvious first-team All-American pick on the pins. Instead, much of the Huskers’ success has come via its middle blockers. NU sets its middle blockers more frequently (30 percent) this season than in any year in the recent past, and more often than any of its other contenders for the NCAA title. 

That has helped the Huskers lead the country in a metric not often discussed widely, but important to understand effectiveness. Nebraska’s Sideout Percentage - the frequency the Huskers win points when the other team is serving - leads the nation at 70.4 percent. Further, NU scores on its first possession after receiving an opponent’s serve - referred to as a First Ball Sideout or FBSO - at 49 percent. So, essentially, half the time an opponent serves Nebraska the ball, they don’t get the ball back with a chance to score themselves.

Those marks would be the best among any of the five most-recent national champions.

2025 Nebraska vs the Last 5 NCAA Champions

Year	Team	Sideout Percentage	FBSO Percentage
2025	Nebraska	70.4%	49.2%
2024	Penn State	64.5%	41.9%
2023	Texas	63.3%	39.8%
2022	Texas	68.9%	47.6%
2021	Wisconsin	65.7%	42.3%
2020	Kentucky	70.2%	49.0%

The Huskers’ offensive efficiency is not only poised to smash the previous school record of .331 set in 1986, but it could elbow its way into the national record book. 

NU’s .348 hitting percentage is on track to be the fifth-highest since the NCAA switched to a 25-point set format in 2008. The other teams near that mark, almost without exception, made deep runs in the postseason.

Team	Year	Attack Percentage	Season Result
Penn State	2008	.390	NCAA Champions
Penn State	2009	.381	NCAA Champions
Kentucky	2020	.360	NCAA Champions
Missouri	2013	.356	NCAA 2nd Round
Western Kentucky	2020	.344	Regional Final
Texas	2023	.343	NCAA Champions

Coming into the season, Busboom Kelly confided to assistant coach Brennan Hagar, who works with NU’s middles, that she wanted the Huskers to feature a middle attack more than any team in the country. Her intention has borne fruit with a glance at the Big Ten leaderboard. Jackson leads all Big Ten players with a .561 attack percentage in conference matches among players who have at least 50 attempts. During one stretch last week, from the Illinois match (where Jackson got kills on all nine of her attempts) and the start of the Minnesota match, Jackson put away 13 consecutive swings!

It’s not just Jackson, however. Senior middle Rebekah Allick is fourth in the Big Ten at .419. And if you dropped the threshold down to players who have taken at least 30 swings, their freshman teammate, Manaia Ogbechie, would be right behind Jackson at .528.

Andi Jackson is hitting .561 in Big Ten matches. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

“It's just like, how can we open up and get more opportunities for (the middles)?” Hagar said. “With Andi being a returning All-American, I think (Busboom Kelly) wanted to force her as much as possible. Bekah, obviously, has come such a long way and just wants to be great, wanted to be more offensively driven. So, it was just another opportunity for her to get more opportunities. Our freshmen as well, I mean, the proof is in their abilities. We should want to set them.”

Middle blockers typically have higher attacking efficiencies because they usually are only set off good passes and face fewer double blocks than pin hitters, who often have to hit out-of-system balls against well-positioned opposing defenses. 

But, her teammates and coaches point to Reilly’s increased confidence in setting Nebraska’s middles even on passes that are less than perfect, keeping defenses off balance when the odds dictate a setter normally throw up a high ball to an outside hitter. Reilly isn’t afraid to - and seems to relish - setting Nebraska’s middles in transition (attacking after digging an opposing shot).

“Half the time, I don't even know if our passing numbers are great, but somehow we're still hitting .500 as a team, and that just speaks to Bergen and how good she is,” outside hitter Harper Murray said Tuesday.

Like this transition set to Allick from last week’s Minnesota match.

And this one from earlier in the season against Stanford.

Tuesday, Busboom Kelly said part of Reilly’s growth could be from the presence of freshman setter Campbell Flynn, a gunslinger of a distributor whose panache may be rubbing off on her veteran teammate.

“I just think (Flynn) is a risky setter, and that's a good thing,” Busboom Kelly said. “And in practice when you see somebody else doing it, you tend to want to simulate it. So, I think it's just made Bergen confident to do the same.”

Confidence is contagious to Nebraska’s attackers as well, said Landfair, with Busboom Kelly encouraging aggressive swings on both in-system sets and tough, out-of-system tries. 

With 15 straight matches of hitting over .300, the numbers provide ample evidence that whatever the Huskers try, it all seems to work.

“I think she gives us the creative freedom to kind of experiment and just try things,” Landfair said. “She's not really angry or anything like that whenever we try things. She's very much like, go for it.”

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