NCAA Ladies
November 28, 2023
By Greg Echlin for VolleyballMag.com
There was hardly a greater option to play your third match of the season than outside with 92,003 followers wanting on — the best attended ladies’s sports activities occasion in historical past — in late August contained in the College of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium.
Except, that’s, you have been on the other finish of the ground going through the Huskers.
The Omaha Mavericks, a first-time NCAA match entry three months later, did that day. They confirmed up, by no means led and acquired swept.
“It was loud. It’s a special sort of teaching setting and taking part in setting,” stated Matt Buttermore, the Mavericks coach since April 2019.
What’s extra, it was a part of a nine-match, season-opening dropping streak.
Discuss a turnaround: Omaha (15-13) tied with three different groups atop The Summit League. Then the Mavericks beat Denver in 5 within the convention semifinals earlier than pulling off a outstanding reverse sweep of Kansas Metropolis within the last, 18-25, 20-25, 26-24, 25-12, 15-11.
Now they of their first NCAA match after they journey to Kansas (23-5), the 14th seed total and fourth within the Wisconsin area. Kansas swept Omaha on August 26. The winner of the 7 p.m. Central Thursday match performs once more Friday in opposition to the winner of the sooner Thursday match between Yale and Penn State.
Omaha misplaced within the earlier two Summit finals to South Dakota.
“We’re going to organize our greatest, play a very good workforce in Kansas and see if we will punch by a pair extra partitions,” stated Buttermore, the successor to Rose Shires who retired after 29 seasons.
Omaha is one in every of three Nebraska faculties within the NCAA Match together with the aforementioned top-seeded Huskers and the opposite workforce in Omaha, Twelfth-seeded Creighton.
As if that doesn’t say sufficient in regards to the state of volleyball in Nebraska, do this: Two extra faculties — the College of Nebraska-Kearney and Wayne State School — are within the NCAA Division II match.
“It’s actually wonderful for such a small (inhabitants) state,” Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Sales space stated.
As a No. 3 seed within the Pittsburgh Area, Creighton (27-4), the Massive East Convention regular-season and match champion, opens in opposition to Colgate (22-7) on Friday. Nebraska (28-1) performs host to Lengthy Island College (13-18).
Omaha’s climb so far
Begin with the football-stadium match final August 30.
The soccer a part of the setting was acquainted to Nebraska director of athletics Trev Alberts, as soon as a Huskers gridiron hero on the college’s famed Blackshirt protection in the course of the peak of its Nineteen Nineties soccer glory.
After his NFL profession and a stint on ESPN as a soccer commentator, Alberts entered the world of faculty administration and finally turned the Omaha AD. He’s most prominently recognized in Omaha for eradicating Mavs soccer earlier than shifting on to his alma mater.
Since then, Omaha’s most profitable sport has been males’s ice hockey —the Mavs made the NCAA Frozen 4 in 2015 — they usually’re routinely matched in opposition to the massive, unhealthy wolves from the extra icy climates. However nothing might have matched the overwhelming feeling of taking part in volleyball in Memorial Stadium.
Buttermore stated the Mavs tried to benefit from the second, however added, “We’d have favored to hit a little bit greater share, but it surely seems Nebraska’s fairly good, too.”
Certainly, Omaha hit minus .080 in opposition to Nebraska that night time. After which by falling right into a rut with a file of 0-9 didn’t bode nicely for the Mavs’ probabilities to make the NCAA match.
“We knew that the groups we have been competing in opposition to have been actually robust groups,” stated senior McKenna Ruch, a center blocker from Millard North Excessive College on the outskirts of Omaha.
“We wished we had carried out higher, however on the similar time we couldn’t be too onerous on ourselves.”
There was nothing simple about Omaha’s early schedule. It misplaced to the SEC’s Texas A&M, additionally within the NCAA discipline, after which Kansas earlier than taking part in Nebraska. The Mavs misplaced to Kansas State, Lengthy Seashore State and Iowa State — one other NCAA tourney workforce — after which in 5 units every to Northern Colorado and Wichita State, that are each taking part in within the NIVC.
Lastly, on September 16 at Northern Colorado, Omaha broke by by sweeping Bradley.
Exterior hitter Shayla McCormick, a junior from Skutt Catholic in Omaha, had 12 kills, essentially the most since she had 13 to open the season in opposition to A&M.
“Whenever you lose that many video games, you’ve acquired to have a look at what actually issues,” Buttermore stated. “Whenever you don’t have the ego enhance of successful, we went again to our values.”
To Buttermore, it meant sending a message that it was vital for his gamers to recollect why they’re in school. He implored them to prioritize the significance of positively impacting their lives and the lives of others.
“Who we turn out to be is extra vital than what we obtain, and that has to matter while you’re 0-9 simply as a lot as while you’re 9-0,” Buttermore stated.
Ruch cited the important thing issue within the Mavs turnaround: “One thing that we’ve actually labored onerous on is our protection and our block.”
From the tip of September to mid-October, the Mavs put collectively an eight-match successful streak. Ruch, the workforce chief in kills (291), had 5 straight matches with 10 extra in that run.
Exterior hitter Rachel Fairbanks, a senior from Lansing, Kansas, was additionally a key performer with 4 double-doubles in kills and digs throughout that successful streak. Fairbanks, one in every of 4 Mavs with greater than 200 kills this season, is the workforce chief in service aces.
The ultimate barrier was the 2-0 deficit the Mavs confronted in opposition to the top-seeded Kansas Metropolis Roos within the Summit match last.
“We weren’t doing too scorching on protection at first. As soon as that rotated, we began getting extra blocks and began digging extra balls,” stated Ruch, voted the match MVP.
However with 18 whole blocks, essentially the most in a match since 2018, the Mavs pulled off that reverse sweep. Fairbanks and McCormick every set a career-high in digs and largely contributed to the workforce’s 108 digs within the match, the Mavs’ most since 2017.
UNK prepared in DII
In the meantime, Nebraska-Kearney coach Rick Squiers was sweating out the at-large picks for the eight-team Central Area within the Division II match.
He knew the Lopers had sturdy sufficient credentials, however has been across the enterprise lengthy sufficient to know that match exclusion isn’t out of the query.
UNK is 28-5 after going 16-4 within the MIAA. Within the convention match, the Lopers swept Northwest Missouri and Missouri Southern, however acquired swept within the last by Central Missouri, which took the automated bid.
The at-large bit put UNK, the No. 6 seed within the eight-team area, in opposition to Southwest Minnesota (23-6) at midday Central Thursday in St. Paul, Minnesota. Second-seeded Wayne State School (28-2) follows in opposition to Minnesota Duluth.
UNK has six gamers with 127 or extra kills, 305 by proper aspect Jaden Ferguson, a graduate pupil from Lincoln, Nebraska, who additionally leads with 34 aces and is second in blocks with 71, 12 solo.
“A tremendous 12 months,” stated Squiers, who’s in his 25th 12 months at UNK. “I’m glad for Matt (Buttermore) and his bunch. That they had an unbelievable second half of the season. For certain.”