Sept. 8, 2001

Stats

The University of Notre Dame volleyball team (3-2) lost its second match of the U.S. Bank/Arby’s Tournament to #1 Nebraska (5-1) in three games (29-31, 22-30, 20-30) in Lincoln, Neb., Saturday afternoon. The Irish have one game remaining in the tournament against #15 Pepperdine on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Similar to Notre Dame’s loss to UCLA on Friday in three games, Notre Dame battled a higher-ranked opponent to the brink in game one. In front of a packed Memorial Coliseum crowd in Lincoln, Notre Dame held onto a lead in game one until the very end.

Enjoying a string of solid passes, Notre Dame used two Emily Loomis (Fort Wayne, Ind.) kills and a Kristy Kreher (Birmingham, Mich.) slam to jump ahead 9-5 in the match.

Nebraska came right back with a kill and an ace to cut the Irish lead to 11-10, but Notre Dame would keep the Huskers at bay until the final points of the game. A block from sophomore Kim Fletcher (St. Louis, Mo.) put the Irish ahead 26-25, but the Huskers responded with a kill from Anna Schrad and an ace from All-American Greichaly Cepero to jump into the lead for the first time in the game at 27-26.

Both teams exchanged service errors and following some great back-and-forth action, Fletcher knocked down a kill to tie the score at 28. Notre Dame then forced an attack error and the Irish were at game point 29-28.

The Huskers set Laura Pilakowski on the next play and she tied the game with a solid kill down the middle of the Irish defense. Notre Dame went to their main offensive threat throughout the first two weeks of the season, senior middle blocker Malinda Goralski (Missouri City, Texas), but the Nebraska defense was ready. Two blocks from the Husker front line on consecutive Goralski attempts earned Nebraska the game one victory.

With the momentum in hand and over 4,000 fans rooting them on, Nebraska found their hitting stroke and won games two and three (30-22 and 30-20) to earn its fifth victory of the season. Both team’s hitting numbers went in opposite directions during the second and third game, as Notre Dame would hit just .132 and .081 in games two and three while the Huskers posted numbers of .341 and .438.

Possibly lost in Notre Dame’s tough loss was the re-emergence of Irish opposite Kreher. Scoring a team-high 13 kills, Kreher seems close to shaking off the effects of a sprained ankle that affected her conditioning over the summer and is getting closer to her usual form. She also had six digs and two blocks in the match while Fletcher added six kills and a team-high eight digs.

Nebraska was led by Pilakowski’s 14 kills and opposite Nancy Metcalf added 11 kills and 11 digs.