‘It’s just another game’: Nebraska volleyball confident ahead of No. 1 Wisconsin

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — It’s the most sought-after ticket in Nebraska right now: No. 1 Wisconsin volleyball heads to Lincoln on Saturday night to face No. 2 Nebraska in a battle of the unbeatens.

Standing room only tickets are over $200, and a seat will cost you upward of $300.

Despite Saturday’s match being highly anticipated by Husker fans, the team feels calm, cool and collected ahead of the Badgers.

“I think we’ve been training for this since we got here in January,” junior captain Merritt Beason said. “We train every single day for the really big moments and the really big matches. … For us, it’s just another game.”

Co-captain Lexi Rodriguez added, “We haven’t really been looking too far into it. Now that it’s here, I think we’re just ready to go out there and compete.”

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Nebraska Athletics

Nebraska has lost 10 straight matches to Wisconsin, but coach John Cook isn’t treating this like a special match. Instead, he sees the Badgers as just another Big Ten team to beat.

“Doesn’t matter whether it’s Wisconsin, Northwestern, Rutgers, Iowa, it’s match 10,” he said. “In the Big Ten, you have to stay focused in the moment, and this team’s done a really good job of that.”

Beason is only player on the Huskers’ roster who’s defeated Wisconsin before. She did so with Florida last season and said taking the underdog approach worked for the Gators.

“We went in there knowing that we had nothing to lose,” she said.

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But as for this Husker team, Rodriguez said they haven’t thought about being the underdog at all.

“The team does really good at just taking it one day at a time, one rep at a time and not looking too far ahead in the future,” Rodriguez said.