#24 Baylor at #9 Nebraska, Wednesday 11/18/2009

[Husker Runner]

#24 Baylor (21-7 overall, 10-7 conference) at #9 Nebraska (19-6, 12-4)

 

When: Wednesday, November 18th, 7:00pm CT

Where: NU Coliseum, Lincoln, Nebraska

TV: NET (local only)

Video Webcast: CLICK HERE

Audio Webcast: CLICK HERE

Live Stats: Link not available

 

Nebraska swept Baylor last month in Waco with a fine all-around effort. The Bears are coming off a of 3-1 loss to Kansas despite a triple-double from setter Taylor Barnes, but are a lock for the NCAA tournament with their first 20+ season since 1999.

 

Floorcam video highlights from the October 14th Nebraska-Baylor match can be viewed HERE.

 

There are no Nebraskans on the Baylor roster, but sophomore backup setter Brittany Ridenour is from Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she was a four year starter at Abraham Lincoln High School. She earned the Nebraska Team Camp MVP award in 2006.

 

Brittany Ridenour

[Husker Runner]

[Husker Runner]

Nebraska looking really good so far.

[Husker Runner]

Nice job tonight in a sweep of Baylor. Great match for Kayla Banwarth.

[Drowning_in_the_Sea_of_Red]

Nice job tonight in a sweep of Baylor. Great match for Kayla Banwarth.

Indeed. New Nebraska record for digs in a 3-set match. 32 or 33, I think?

[MUTigerFan]

Nice job tonight in a sweep of Baylor. Great match for Kayla Banwarth.

Kayla was simply unbelievable. Fantastic, amazing, remarkable and really really good too.

[Husker Runner]

Head Coach John Cook

Opening Statement

“We were a little rough around the edges tonight. Kayla dominated the court. I thought Lindsey Licht had another great night. She took advantage of the matchups. Our game plan going in was to not let their middles, (Anna) Breyfogle, (Elizabeth) Graham, and (Torri) Campbell, have great nights. If you look at their wins and the matches they’ve done well in, those guys have had big nights. Two of them hit negative tonight, even though their left sides hit some okay numbers. We did a nice job with our blocking defense and shutting those guys down. We held them to .089.”

 

On Nebraska’s errors

“We were just making a few too many errors. We were giving them a few too many points compared to where we have been the past four or five matches. That was something we have to work on and get better at. If you count up how many points we gave them, it was too many. But we did some really good things. If you hold somebody to .089, that’s a pretty nice night.”

 

On Kayla Banwarth

“I just felt like she controlled the court tonight. She passed the jump serve from (Taylor) Barnes, who leads the Big 12 in aces per game. She had 32 digs and that’s giving us a lot of opportunities, but we didn’t take advantage of all of them. We made some unforced hitting errors. A lot of those digs, Sydney (Anderson) set to (Lindsey) Licht behind her one-on-one, and Lindsey is killing them. I think she’s gone two matches there with one error. You guys have been around long enough to know that when a libero has a great night, the impact it has on a team. It impacted our team in a really positive way and it impacted Baylor in a negative way.”

 

On Nebraska’s game tonight

“I know the level we can play at and what we have to play at, but we still have nice win tonight. I told them it was a good win, but we have to get better. It’s a nice win over a ranked team, 3-0, with pretty dominating scores. If you look at the scores, it looked like we blew them out, but it didn’t look like that to me. It looked like we were just on the verge of one of those jump servers getting hot or Torri Campbell getting hot. We did a nice job of controlling Taylor Barnes too. She had eight kills against kills and hit .500. We did a really nice job on that.’

 

Tara Mueller

On Kayla Banwarth’s 32 digs

“I think it’s something that Kayla has been working on every day in practice and I think that she just knows where to be all of the time. That’s awesome. I’m really proud of her.”

 

On a hitter’s frustration

“When you make the hardest hit you can and they pop it up somehow. That just frustrates you. We’ve been working really hard on our defense and putting the ball away out of system, having different people setting the ball. That’s frustrating to teams when you can be out of system and still score. That’s how we’re trying to keep pressure on teams. “

 

On what Mueller was focused on against Baylor

“I was just focusing on what I could do and focusing on making shots that I practice and that we practice every day. I was just trying to find the open spaces on the court.”

 

On Nebraska’s attitude coming into the match“

"We were really excited. We knew that they were going to come out fighting. Everyone is fighting for the tournament. We came out really strong and we came out having fun and doing what we can do as a team and building off of the momentum from our last matches. We just need to keep rolling off of that.”

 

Kayla Banwarth

On when other teams are making a lot of digs

“When teams are scrappy and when teams are getting crazy digs, it’s so annoying. I’m not even a hitter and that bothers me. “

 

On working on out-of-system balls

“We’ve taken time to work on it in practice and all the miscommunications we might have had in the beginning of the season, we’ve worked out and we’ve gone through and specifically worked on situations and all of that work is starting to pay off.”

 

On Nebraska’s passing

“I think our passing is a lot better than it was a month ago. We’re just getting more practice on it every day and we’re getting better at it and we’re more comfortable with it.”

[Husker Runner]

Kayla Banwarth