If you watched the Nebraska Cornhuskers volleyball game Tuesday night and suddenly had flashbacks to the Nebraska football program of the early 1990s, don’t feel bad. You weren’t alone.
The Huskers of the late Tom Osborne era were the most dominant in the history of the program. They were one of the most dominant programs in all of sports. And it feels like maybe when it’s all said and done, we’ll be saying the same thing about this era of John Cook volleyball.
Watching the Nebraska Cornhuskers team battle through death threats and legal troubles in the offseason, highly emotional situations and the disappointment of making it to the National Title Game and then losing, reminded me a lot of the early days of Osborne’s great run.
When the game started, the Huskers were not playing at their best. They seemed a little hesitant. They looked like a team that was perhaps still suffering from the aftereffects of the offseason. Because as good as NU was, they usually start the season against opponents who are on schedule to find their stride.
They didn’t do that tonight, and it looked like their strategy of playing against one of the best teams in the country might backfire.
And then, like the old Husker football programs, this Huskers team seemed to realize how good they really are. They overcame a 7-4 deficit in the first set to win it 25-21. They took an 11-6 lead in the second set, but then struggled again.
You could compare that second-set stumble to the one the Missouri Tigers suffered the season they won their last national title. The problem with that comparison, of course, is that NU was never really in that kind of trouble.
After actually losing the second set, they essentially won comfortably, taking the third set 25:15 and the fourth set 25:20.
After all, the Nebraska Cornhuskers had pretty impressively defeated a Kentucky Wildcats team led by a former Huskers assistant coach who was ranked No. 9 nationally, and it seems as though John Cook and Co. sent a message that the rest of the sport should heed.
