[Husker] Volleyball

[Gary Fead]

Good Morning All:

What an electric atmosphere last night at the Qwest Center here in Omaha! The Huskers came out a little jittery but got things turned around in game two and went on from there to advance to tomorrow night's national championship match against the Stanford Cardinal. 

I cannot tell you how proud I am of these young ladies and the tremendous support the crowd (17,0013) in Omaha gave them last night. I stayed around for the second match last night between Washington and Stanford and quite honestly it didn't appear to me that Washington was even into the match. Stanford got off to a quick start and never looked back eliminating last year's defending national champion three games to zero. 

As far as tomorrow night's match goes I said to several people here in my office yesterday that I thought if Nebraska gets past UCLA they will win on Saturday and I still feel the same way this morning. Stanford is a good team but I think Nebraska is just plain better. 

The visiting teams brought the following combination of support, Washington brought a band, fans, a mascot and cheerleaders. UCLA brought a band and fans and Stanford just brought fans. As silly as this may sound I have to think the Nebraska pep band (along with the cheerleaders) will help keep the crowd into this thing if things get a little tough tomorrow. 

Last night's crowd was good. I was a little worried about what type of crowd we would have. As most of you know NU only plays in front of 4,100 at home so we had 13,000 more people in attendance than a normal NU match. I was a little concerned that we might have a crowd with a football mentality that did a lot of booing and grumbling about the calls, fortunately we did not. 

A witness to the fact that Nebraska has a lot of home grown volleyball interest and developement there were a lot of young girls and college aged girls in attendance last night. I sat next to a young lady who plays volleyball for Hastings College. In my conversation with her I learned that she and her mother do not have NU season tickets but really wish they could go to some matches (I told them to call me next season and I'd hook them up with tickets since I do). 

Tomorrow night's match will be televised live on ESPN 2, with the match starting at 8:00 PM CT, I'll do my best at the match and if you can't be here in Omaha then gather around a TV (or radio if you can pick the Nebraska Volleyball Network with John Baylor) and let's pull them through and win a national championship here in our home state. 

Go Big Red -

Gary Fead