Nique's Notes

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Hey Husker Fans!

After our Thanksgiving trip to New Mexico, we returned to the Devaney Center for a four-game home stretch beginning with Oral Roberts. We won 70-51. They had a really good guard in Janae Voelker who scored 16 points and had 17 rebounds. However, coach was really happy with what we accomplished in the game and felt like we followed the scouting report really well.

Up next, was No. 18 Ohio State, Cat made her first career start and played really well for us. We played them tough and this is a game we felt like we should have won, but we lost by four. We felt again really good about our execution and our game plan versus this team. Coach Yori stressed to us that when we get top 25 teams to come into the Devaney Center and we have an opportunity to win like we did in the Ohio State game, we have to capitalize on it and win those types of games.

Next we played two California teams that we played out in California last year. Those teams were Cal State Bakersfield and Long Beach State. Cal State Bakersfield is a really tough team to play. They have tremendous guards who are really athletic and are just flat-out play-makers. Last year they played us really tough and it was a game that came down to the wire. We won 70-57 this year. Long Beach State was a team that was a lot younger than the previous year, but was still very athletic and a pretty good team, we won 76-44.

On Dec. 19, we headed on the road to take on UTEP - the 2008 Conference USA champions. The Miners made their school's first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament last year. It was not one of our better games and another game that we felt like we should have one. Unfortunately we lost by 10 points.

We all headed home for Christmas break. There were not too many of us who made trips back to Omaha except for Kala, Jess, Vonnie, Nikki and I. This year we flew through the Denver airport. We were supposed to fly out of El Paso, to Denver and then Denver to Omaha. There was some kind of accident at the Denver airport that was delaying all flights. We flew into Denver and missed our connecting flight to Omaha by no more than 10 minutes. They would not be able to get us out before 3:30 in the afternoon the next day, so we all decided that we were going to drive.

Jess and I hopped in the car with the dynamic duo of Jeff Griesch and Matt Coatney, along with Garret from HuskerVision. It was a long, cramped trip since I was stuck in the middle of the back seat. Coatney and Griesch talked the WHOLE TIME!!! Actually, Coatney did most of the talking and Griesch just listened. In fact, if there is anything that you want to know about Matt Coatney, you can just ask me because I now know everything about him.

My family was out of town showing off that baby sister that I have named Amira. So I spent quality time with my sister Taneah, who is a freshman at the University. She had been staying at my apartment, which was quiet interesting. We haven't spent that much time together since I lived at home and there were times when it was getting a little heated. I spent Christmas day with my boyfriend Clyde and his family along with my mom's mother and all of her siblings.

I was very happy that Jess's family was here this year because I know that they are very important to her and its hard to be away from your family for long periods of time, especially the holidays. My grandparents and my cousin Tiffany had Jess's family over for dinner on the 23rd. It was a lot of fun and we took lots of pictures. Jess also was surprised with a new car, which she was very happy about.

We had to be back in Lincoln on the Dec. 26 to prepare for Pac-10 powerhouse No. 24 Arizona State. This was an exciting game for many reasons and one that we were looking forward to. Nicole's parents were also going to be watching her for the first time in Lincoln and her being a native of Arizona this is a game we wanted to win.

As most of you know we were down 18-2 and we missed our first 13 shots from the field. We battled and cut it to nine by halftime, and came out on fire. We just kept chipping away at it and finally took the lead with a couple minutes left in the game. We won 62-58 and we felt really good about this win.

I think the best thing about our team is that we are very hard working and we are an effort team. Something that a Coach Yori emphasizes a lot to us is that we might not always do everything right, but no one is ever going to outplay us in terms of our effort. We can't always control how many shots we make, but we can control our effort.

This past week, we spent New Year's in Baton Rouge to play LSU. The Tigers were coming off five consecutive years in the NCAA Women's Final Four. We enjoyed a nice dinner followed by a New Year's bash in coach Yori's room, which Tay Hester left extremely messy! We had Little Debbie snacks for dessert along with sparkling grape juice. Since we had curfew that night since it was an early game, we celebrated Nova Scotia New Year, which was two hours ahead of New Year's in the central time zone. We fell short to LSU which was the end of non-conference play.

Unfortunately, Nikki Bober was unable to help us at LSU because she suffered an ACL injury on Dec. 30 in practice. We were all really bummed about Nikki's injury. She brings a lot of things to this team that we are missing already. Nikki is one of our best communicators inside and she loves playing basketball for Nebraska, so she helps make the game fun for everybody. She has had surgery and we are wishing both Kelsey and Nikki speedy recoveries and we are looking forward to having both of them back as seniors next season.

I hope you all have enjoyed your holiday break and are looking forward to watching us in action again at the Devaney Center when we take on No. 4 Oklahoma in the Big 12 opener on Saturday.

Nique