When the No. 16-seeded UCLA women’s volleyball team
(20-10) travels to Omaha, Neb., to face the top-seeded Nebraska
Cornhuskers (29-1) in the third round of the NCAA Tournament on
Friday, the Bruins will be entering uncharted territory. As of 9
a.m. on Wednesday, the NCAA Regional had already sold a new NCAA
record of 13,252 tickets, eclipsing the old record of 13,193 fans
set by Wisconsin University in the 1998 National Championship
match. The tickets will allow fans to attend both regional
semifinal matches Friday night at Omaha’s Qwest Center (No. 7
Louisville v. No. 4 Florida at 3 p.m. and UCLA v. Nebraska at 5
p.m.) and the regional final match, which will take place at 3 p.m.
on Saturday. “This is a tremendous thing for volleyball, and
we’re happy to be a part of it,” coach Andy Banachowski
said. “We’ve drawn a tough seed in having to face the
No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but it’s what we deserve
with how we’ve played this season.” When you compare
the 13,000-plus fans who will show up at UCLA’s match against
the Cornhuskers this Friday to the 477 fans who attended
UCLA’s victory against San Diego in the second round of the
tournament at Pauley Pavilion last Saturday, Friday’s match
will present new challenges for the Bruins to overcome.
“It’s definitely different from playing at home or
anywhere else in the Pac-10,” junior middle blocker Nana
Meriwether said. “I feel like it’s an advantage because
it makes us more competitive.” Friday’s match will mark
the second time in three years that the UCLA women’s
volleyball team has traveled to Nebraska to face the Cornhuskers in
the third round of the NCAA Tournament. In the 2003 season, the
Bruins played in front of a packed house of 4,150 at the Nebraska
Coliseum in Lincoln on Nebraska’s campus. The then-No. 8
Bruins lost the first game to the then-No. 9 Cornhuskers, but used
an inspired effort to win the next three games and advance to the
Elite Eight. Senior middle blocker Nancy Barba is one of the three
current Bruins (Laura Kroneberger and Colby Lyman are the others)
to play in that match against Nebraska. “It was crazy,”
said Barba, who played in her last collegiate match at Pauley
Pavilion last Saturday. “It was a really big crowd but we
were able to handle it and come away with a win. It’s going
to be an even bigger crowd this time around.” The size of the
crowd is not going to be the only difference between the two
matches. Both teams have completely different rosters and are
different types of teams compared to two years ago. Nebraska has
been able to use a mix of veterans and underclassmen to become the
clear No. 1 team in the nation this season. The Cornhuskers have
been tested by tough teams throughout the year, and are 5-0 this
season against teams currently ranked in the top 10 of the
CSTV/AVCA Coaches Poll including a dominating sweep over No. 2 Penn
State earlier in the year. Nebraska coach John Cook expressed
confidence in the Cornhuskers’ match-up with the Bruins.
“I’m not sure they’ve played a team as physical
as we are,” Cook said. “I think our blocking defense
will create some challenges for them and I think they’ll have
trouble matching up to us, assuming we can pass the ball.”
Still, the Cornhuskers are not taking anything for granted.
Nebraska was a perfect 28-0 before collapsing and suffering a
disappointing loss to Texas, who was eliminated by Hawaii in
second-round competition last week, to end the regular season. But
it’s the loss to UCLA two years ago that is still fresh in
some of the players’ minds. “We do have some revenge to
give them,” said senior middle blocker Melissa Elmer, whose
average blocks per game (2.17) lead the nation for the second
consecutive season. “We learned a lot from that year and we
were a very young team. But this is a new UCLA team, too, so
we’ve got to approach it a different way.” For UCLA,
playing Nebraska is a new defining point in the season. The Bruins
handed No. 3 Washington its only loss of the season last month in a
match that Nana Meriwether tied a school record for blocks in a
match with 17 and Banachowski won his 1,000th career match in an
inspiring team performance. A win against Nebraska would mean even
more to the team than the win against Washington. “This is
the NCAA Tournament, they’re ranked first in the country, and
it would be a huge win for us,” Meriwether said. “You
could compare it to the Washington game, but this is an even bigger
game because if we lose, we’re out.” Even though it
seems like the odds are stacked against them, the Bruins have a lot
going for them as a team heading into the Nebraska match. UCLA has
been playing its best volleyball of the year, going 9-2 in November
and December, and capping their run with a 3-0 (30-24, 30-23,
30-19) sweep on Saturday over then-No. 18 San Diego. “We feel
really good about what we’ve done so far this year and how
much we’ve improved and how we continue to improve,”
Banachowski said. As for their upset chances, Barba realizes that
if she wants to keep her senior season going, the Bruins are going
to have to play well against the No. 1 seed. Nonetheless, she and
the rest of the Bruins are trying not to get too intimidated.
“They’re corn-fed girls,” Barba said about
Nebraska, “But I think we can take them down.”
MERIWETHER COLLECTS HONOR: Junior middle blocker Nana Meriwether
was honored with a selection to the AVCA All-Pacific Region first
team on Tuesday. Meriwether currently ranks fourth in the NCAA in
blocking with a 1.77 per-game average, and is also 22nd in the
national rankings with a .379 attack percentage. Last Friday
against Kansas, Meriwether hit .708 with 18 kills and just one
error. Her performance against San Diego in the second round on
Saturday was even better as Meriwether hit .824 with 14 error-free
kills. Meriwether has tied the UCLA record for blocks in a match
this year (17 against Washington) and with five more blocks, she
will become the fourth player in UCLA women’s volleyball
history to have at least 200 total blocks in a season.