Greatest hits: The 5 best Nebraska vs. Wisconsin volleyball matches

The series dates to Nebraska’s third official season in 1977. They have faced off the NCAA tournament five times, including twice in the national championship match.

Nebraska leads the all-time series 19-13-1, but the Badgers have won the last 10 matches in the series. Nebraska last beat the Badgers in 2017.

Here are a few of the memorable matches in the series:

In the national championship in Columbus, Ohio, the Badgers won the fifth set 15-12 to win the program’s first national championship after being denied during its first three national title match appearances over 20 years. The difference between winning and losing was the Badgers sprinting to a 7-0 lead in the fifth set.

National player of the year Dana Rettke got the final kill. But a deciding factor was Anna Smrek, the 6-foot-9 middle blocker from Canada, who led the Badgers with 14 kills on .429 hitting. Nebraska fans will see Smrek again on Saturday.

All five sets were decided by three points or fewer.

“That’s what a national championship should be,” Nebraska coach John Cook said.

In the national championship match in Richmond, Virginia, Nebraska wins the fifth set 15-9, with Cook leading the Huskers to a perfect 34-0 record in his first year as head coach.

That match comes with mixed emotions for Cook, who just two years earlier was the head coach at Wisconsin and had recruited several of the Wisconsin players.

Nebraska’s best player Nancy Metcalf redshirted that season after being worn down from months of training with the U.S national team. The thought was that Nebraska was maybe one year away from a deep run, but instead, they won the title that year. Can that story repeat itself in 2023 with the Huskers’ lineup that doesn’t have any seniors?

Nebraska lost the first two sets but rallied behind Annika Albrecht, Mikaela Foecke, Kelly Hunter, Sydney Townsend and Kenzie Maloney.

In the locker room after losing the first two sets, the players talked about everybody needing to give a little more the rest of the way, and not worrying about playing perfect.

“We don’t need perfect on our team,” said Albrecht, who came to Nebraska as a walk-on who was described as the LeBron James of her homeschool volleyball league and became an All-American outside hitter her senior year. “We just need six people out there playing as one.”

Wisconsin beat Nebraska a few weeks later, but rallying to win the match in Lincoln gave Nebraska the opportunity to be Big Ten co-champions with Penn State at 19-1.

Nebraska went on to win the national championship that season but hasn’t beaten Wisconsin since.

In the final week of the regular season, Nebraska still had a chance to win the Big Ten title if it could win its final two matches against Wisconsin and Minnesota.

But it was a sad scene two hours before the match when Husker senior Kenzie Knuckles arrived at the Devaney Sports Center using leg crutches after suffering a second-ending injury earlier in the week.

Wisconsin won, and then a Big Ten official presented the Badgers with the championship trophy on Nebraska’s court.

“He’s got a nice system,” Cook said of Badgers coach Kelly Sheffield. “They’re hard to defend. I think we defended them twice pretty well. Devyn Robinson is a first-team All-American level.”

Robinson is still on the team but has missed the past three matches with an injury.

In an NCAA Elite Eight match before a crowd of 4,271 at the NU Coliseum, Nebraska rallies from a 2-1 deficit to win in five sets, denying Cook’s Badgers a chance to play in a hometown Final Four in Madison. Metcalf led the Huskers with 27 kills.

It was during that week when Nebraska coach Terry Pettit told Cook he was beginning to make plans to retire, and the wheels went in motion for Cook to return to Lincoln as the next head coach of the Huskers. Pettit had given Cook his start in college coaching as an assistant at Nebraska in 1988.