Top-Ranked Huskers Aware of Weaknesses Ahead of Road Stretch

Nebraska may be 12-0 and fresh off of three-straight sweeps, but it'll take cleaner volleyball than they've been playing to stay perfect as they get ready to hit the road.

Despite recording their third-straight sweep, the Nebraska volleyball team will be looking to block out some noise with several road matches on the horizon. | Amarillo Mullen

Nebraska has won volleyball matches in nearly every way imaginable through its first 12 outings of the year.

They've done it with the serve, they've dominated with the block, and if they get to run their offense up the middle like Maryland allowed them to do Saturday night — good night. The Huskers are 12-0, but of those 12 wins, there is one key stat that might be glossed over, thanks to all of the other superlatives of the season to this point.

Ten of them happened in the state of Nebraska.

The Bob Devaney Sports Center has already seen a lot of volleyball in 2025, with 10 of Nebraska's 12 matches on the year taking place in the state of Nebraska. | Nebraska Athletics

When you're as well-rounded as the Huskers have looked through the early part of the season, you might not think the location of the match matters a whole heck of a lot. Then you look a little deeper and realize Nebraska's only dropped six sets all season, with two of them being on the road against Kentucky in a neutral-site showdown.

The other two road matches of note were at Lipscomb in Nashville and at Creighton in Omaha (where Nebraska dropped two more sets). In other words, Nebraska hasn't played a full-fledged road match against a high-level opponent just yet, and when it's been somewhat close, the Big Red has been far from perfect.

Even during a "road match" at Creighton, the CHI Health Center turned into a Nebraska home setting with plenty of red dominating the sell-out crowd. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Some of the luxurious start to the year is a proxy of Nebraska's fan base traveling really well and, of course, representing NU during the tough five-set thriller against Creighton, but another it is just a very handy schedule for first-year coach Dani Busboom Kelly. Very few volleyball coaches can say they played the entire month of September in the same state.

The reason for harping on this is due to the slate ahead. After ten of their first 12 matches being in the Cornhusker state, five of Nebraska's next six matches will be on the road, and Husker fans will only be able to attend three home matches for the entire month of October. The stretch kicks off Friday when the Huskers head to Happy Valley to take on 15th-ranked Penn State.

Fortunately for Nebraska, what they'll lack in a home court advantage, they'll more than make up for with the ability to scout their upcoming opponent.

Nebraska coach Dani Busboom Kelly is able to provide "cleaner" scouting reports on NU's opponents now that we're more than a month into the season. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

"At the beginning of the season, you don't really have film on teams," Busboom Kelly said. "Now that there's four weeks, five weeks of film, you can have a better game plan. I think we've spent more time on (scouting reports) because we have more information. It's cleaning it up."

Nebraska senior middle blocker Rebekah Allick credited Nebraska's third-straight sweep to a cleaner scouting report ahead of their match against Maryland, and Busboom Kelly agreed.

"It's just about getting more information and using it," Busboom Kelly said. "Then we are working on it a little bit more in practice than we were in the preseason."

Nebraska's serve receive continues to be a work in progress. Maryland recorded nine aces against the Huskers despite the Nebraska sweep. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Nebraska may have earned the sweep Saturday night against Maryland, but the win didn't come without some struggle. NU won sets one and three by the same score of 25-14, but set two pushed it all the way to a 27-25 Husker win.

One of the main reasons was Maryland's serve. The Terrapins recorded nine aces on the night to just seven service errors, once again highlighting one of the few weaknesses of the Nebraska volleyball team — serve receive.

"Maryland served really, really well, and honestly they served us off the court there in that second set," Nebraska junior middle blocker Andi Jackson said. "Adjusting to that like we did in that third set and coming out and knowing that was not our best volleyball, but this set is going to be better."

Fear the ear! 🌽 pic.twitter.com/kNYVTJ5NdN

— Nebraska Volleyball (@HuskerVB) September 27, 2025

Not surprisingly, it was a better third set, but as the team gets ready to see more road matches than home matches in October, it's an area opponents will look to exploit. In other words, expect plenty of practice time this week to be spent on the team's serve-receive game, or lack thereof.

There will be no midweek match for the Huskers this week, but they will play on back-to-back nights. After Friday's match at Penn State, Nebraska will head to New Jersey to take on Rutgers. It's a trip that will test Nebraska in a way they haven't truly been tested in 2025, but it's also something NU is looking forward to.

Earlier in September, Busboom Kelly actually pointed out that the team hasn't been able to bond as much as she'd like because they haven't had a true road trip where it's just the team all together. That changes this week, and it'll allow the team to continue to learn more about itself just like they did earlier in the year.

The Huskers will get to continue learning more about itself as it embarks on only its second true road trip of the season with tests at Penn State and Rutgers on the horizon. | Amarillo Mullen

"In the preseason, you're also trying to learn about yourself so much," Busboom Kelly said. "You don't necessarily have the time or don't want to put the effort towards opponents because you're trying to figure out yourself."

Nebraska may still be trying to figure itself out, but at 12-0 and No. 1 in the country, it seems to be doing okay. First serve between the Huskers and Nittany Lions is set for 7 p.m. CDT Friday and will be nationally televised by FOX.

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