Senior Duo Leads Road To Final Four

Mark this down as one lesson to be learned about Nebraska’s unexpected trip to the 2018 Final Four:

Never doubt the knowledge and expertise of Nebraska volleyball fans.

After all, they were the ones – a good portion of them, anyway – who balked at the preseason AVCA Top 25, which did not have defending national champion Nebraska ranked No. 1. Husker fans took to Twitter and other social media platforms to express their, shall we say, frustration.

Some cited a lack of respect. Others predicted Nebraska players would certainly use this as motivation to make a return trip to the Final Four, and then some, and prove this preseason poll wrong.

Never mind that Nebraska had lost half its starting lineup from its 2017 national championship team, including its three-year starter at setter, and was ushering in eight newcomers. While all of that seemed reasonable for not voting the Huskers No. 1 to start the season, Nebraska fans thought otherwise.

Look who’s smiling now.

Here we are, in mid-December, with Husker fans headed to Minneapolis in droves to watch Nebraska play in a fourth straight Final Four – a first in program history – with a chance at another first: Back-to-back national titles.

Perhaps they were right all along.

No. 6 Nebraska (28-6, 15-5 Big Ten Conference) will face No. 3 Illinois (32-3, 17-3 Big Ten) in Thursday’s national semifinals at 8 p.m. at Target Center on ESPN. The winner will advance to Saturday’s national title match against either BYU or Stanford.

“It’s been a really challenging journey for us to get here,” Nebraska coach John Cook told reporters Wednesday in Minneapolis. “I don’t think any of you guys were penciling us in for the Final Four.”

Certainly not with pen.

But thanks to strong leadership from senior co-captains Mikaela Foecke and Kenzie Maloney – they’re a career 51-2 in the months of November and December, and a career 20-1 in the NCAA Tournament – Nebraska has proven many doubters wrong.

Cook agreed that this is the most improved team within a season of any team he can remember coaching, and that the Huskers couldn’t have done it without Foecke and Maloney leading the way.

“They’ve had to take over the biggest incoming group of new players we’ve ever had – eight, over half our team, are first-time Huskers. Everything is new to them,” Cook said. “These guys have done an amazing job of leading this team, of creating a mindset that we’re going to get better throughout the season.”

Focke, an outside hitter from West Point, Iowa, earned Most Outstanding Player honors of the NCAA Championship in both 2015 and 2017. This season, she leads the Huskers with 3.8 kills per set, and ranks third on Nebraska’s career kills list with 1,638.

“Obviously, some people didn’t see us here right now, but we've done it,” Foecke said. “I think at the beginning of the season to where we are now is leaps and bounds. We had so many young players, players that didn’t know Nebraska volleyball, our system, our culture. We just really tried to instill that in them. It’s been a work in progress, but I think we're still headed up and in the right direction.”

Maloney, from Louisville, Kentucky, is in her second full season as Nebraska’s libero. She earned a spot on the NCAA Championship All-Tournament team last season, and this season is leading Nebraska with 4.06 digs per set. She also earned first team All-Big Ten honors.

Maloney said a rough October stretch, when Nebraska played seven of 10 matches against Top 20 teams, and lost five of them, made the Huskers even stronger.

“This team always believed we could get here, no matter what everyone was saying,” Maloney said. “We just really came together. We told one another that we genuinely thought we had a chance to make it here, but we just had to fix little things we had been talking about.”

Meanwhile, Cook kept selling his young but growing team on how well they were playing and improving statistically.

“I would say that this is one of the best serving teams we’ve had,” Cook said. “In the beginning of the year, we were loli-popping it in. We have become a pretty strong passing team. If you told me at the beginning of the year we’d be the number one defensive team in the country, lead the Big Ten in blocking, I would have taken that bet in a heartbeat that we wouldn’t.”

Cook also found a promising young talent at setter to replace a three-year veteran. Freshman Nicklin Hames is averaging 10.46 assists and 3.33 digs per set. Her 39 service aces are second on the team, and her 23 double-doubles are a Nebraska school record in the rally-scoring era.

“I started thinking after we beat Penn State, and I kept looking at the stats compared to last year, we were leading in several categories this year,” Cook said. “Then I thought, ‘Okay, if Nicklin can continue to improve, we got a shot.’ So we spent a lot of time on what we did all year, developing and improving Nicklin, getting her to play free, not worry about being a freshman at Nebraska, all that.”

For the second time in the NCAA Tournament, Nebraska is facing a team coached by one of its former assistants. The Huskers ousted a Craig Skinner-led Kentucky team from the tournament for a second straight season on the second weekend, and now face an Illinois team led by second-year coach Chris Tamas, and his wife, Jen.

Only two years ago, Tamas helped Nebraska advance to the national semifinals in Columbus, Ohio. Within about three days, he’d interviewed with Illinois and accepted the head coaching position.

When he arrived in February of 2017, the Illini didn’t have enough players to scrimmage 6-on-6. In his first season, he led Illinois to the Sweet 16, and now to the Final Four.

Not surprisingly, Tamas said he learned much from Cook.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be around a lot of good coaches, but John is really good, how he runs the program, how he approaches every day,” Tamas said. “No stone unturned with John, I do know that.”

While Nebraska defeated then-No. 7 Illinois in four sets on the road in September, the Illini returned the favor by beating the Huskers in four in Lincoln in October.

“They’re playing really well,” Cook said of the Illini. “It’s going to take a great effort on our part. We know that. I mean, they’re solid in all the areas. They remind me a lot of us. I think it’s going to come down to which team can win the big points at the end of games, take the big swings, make a play, make the big plays.”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.