The reigning national champion and No. 6-ranked Nebraska women’s volleyball team has a lot of newcomers and underclassmen playing significant roles in its lineup this season.

Freshman setter Nicklin Hames has had to fill the figuratively massive shoes of graduated First Team All-American setter Kelly Hunter. Her fellow rookie Callie Schwarzenbach has taken the place of graduated First Team All-American middle Briana Holman and performanced admirably, leading the team and the conference with 1.49 blocks per set. 

Sophomore Texas transfer Lexi Sun and freshman Capri Davis have both seen time in the OH2 spot, with Davis starting early in the season when Sun was dealing with an undisclosed injury, and Sun getting the starting nod throughout most of the conference slate.

Drum roll, please ... ?

For the second time this season, @HamesNicklin has earned B1G Freshman of the Week! @Huskervball pic.twitter.com/u2KZT33JtH

— Nebraska On BTN (@NebraskaOnBTN) November 14, 2018

Returning starters middle Lauren Stivrins and Jazz Sweet are still both only sophomores, and freshman Megan Miller plays for Sweet in the back row. In fact, senior captains Mikaela Foecke and Kenzie Maloney are the only upperclassmen in the starting lineup. 

Then, there’s gumshoe assistant coach Jaylen Reyes, experiencing not only his first season in Lincoln coaching with John Cook and assistant Kayla Banwarth, but also his first time ever coaching women’s college volleyball. 

A four-year starting libero for the BYU men’s volleyball team from 2012 to 2015, Reyes spent the last three men’s seasons serving as an assistant coach at his alma mater. In the spring, Cook hired him to replace former assistant Tyler Hildebrand, who left to take the director of coaching position for USA Volleyball’s beach national teams. 

Even coming from a place like BYU, where volleyball is a really big deal, Reyes has been most impressed by the unparalleled volleyball atmosphere in Lincoln, and he’s relished the chance to work with Coach Cook, whom he calls “one of the pillars of volleyball in this country.”

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Reyes joined a Husker squad that has won two national championships in the last three seasons and claimed the Big Ten title in both of the last two seasons. But this year, with five losses in conference play, just four matches left to go, and Minnesota sitting atop the standings with a 16-0 league record, a third-consecutive conference title is out of reach for the Huskers this year, a fact Reyes attributed to youth, inexperience, and the overall strength of the conference. 

“There’s a lot of teams that are .500 in the league but I would say they are one of the best teams in the country, which is really crazy,” Reyes said. “If you put some of these teams that are in the middle of the Big Ten right now in other conferences I think they would do really, really well. We’re not dropping games to bad teams. We’re losing to some of the best teams in the country.”

Nebraska lost five of its eight matches in the month of October, falling to Minnesota twice (in four sets both times), Penn State and Wisconsin in five, and Illinois in four. Every team that has defeated the Huskers this year was ranked in the top-10 at the time, and Nebraska never dropped below No. 9 in the national AVCA Top 25 Poll. 

When coach gets a hold of the ?...?

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— Husker Volleyball (@Huskervball) November 15, 2018

November’s results have been much more favorable for the Huskers. They kicked off the final month of the regular season with a five-set victory over then-No. 7 Penn State. Reyes highlighted the significance of that win not only because of the rivalry between the Nebraska and Penn State volleyball programs, but also because it took the Huskers five sets to earn the season split with the Nittany Lions and they had to make in-match adjustments and corrections in order to win.

“We kind of gave away a set in the beginning and then we had to struggle to bring it to five and I thought the girls played really, really well in set five and some of the mistakes that we made early in that match, we had to correct to win,” Reyes said. “It would have been one thing to win 3-0 but we messed up and then we had to kind of undo those mistakes to win the match, I think that was bigger for our team than just showing up and winning 3-0.”

The Huskers followed up the Penn State win with a pair of sweeps over Rutgers and Iowa in which they held their opponents to under 15 points in all but one set. 

Then last week, in a road match versus No. 15 Michigan, the Huskers once again had to correct mistakes made in the first set, which the Wolverines won 25-15 while boasting a .379 team hitting percentage. 

“We didn’t serve and pass that good [in the first set,]” Reyes said. “Michigan is a tough team if they pass the ball really well and they side out really well. They have two really good outsides. Last match, they were running kind of a three-middle offense with double quicks going on, so they can be kind of a handful if you don’t serve it well and you’re not passing it well, and they were passing it well.”

In the break before the second set, the Huskers changed what they were taking away from Michigan outsides Carly Skjodt and Paige Jones on defense and emphasized the need to serve and pass better. The result was a hard-fought four-set victory for Nebraska in which both of the final two sets were won by just two points in overtime. 

Senior Mikaela Foecke, a two-time NCAA tournament MVP, led the match with 22 kills, hitting a scalding .465. 

B1G time road win against No. 15 Michigan ‼️#Huskers #GBR pic.twitter.com/MwqkSWQaZ3

— Husker Volleyball (@Huskervball) November 11, 2018

“[Mikaela’s] a rock. Nothing really phases her,” Reyes said. “She’s one of the girls who Coach can get on and her demeanor doesn’t change at all. It doesn’t really matter what’s going on around her. It doesn’t matter if she just made an error, doesn’t matter if she just killed a ball, doesn’t matter if she maybe didn’t play well last time or didn’t have a great practice, she’s always super steady and that’s a big deal, especially when we’re in all these high-pressure environments.”

The next high-pressure situation the Huskers will face fast approaches as the team’s first and only meeting of the season with No. 12 Purdue looms large Friday in West Lafayette. 

The match marks Nebraska’s final meeting of the regular season with a ranked team and the first time in Holloway Gymnasium for freshmen Schwarzenbach, Hames, Miller, Davis, transfer Sun, and rookie coach Reyes. 

“From what I’ve heard their gym can be a little cracker box where it can be tough on the road team,” Reyes said. “So we’re expecting a battle Friday night.”

The scouting report on Purdue features physical 6-4 opposite Sherridan Atkinson, who ranks fourth in the conference with 4.15 kills per set, veteran middle Blake Mohler, dynamic freshman outside Grace Cleveland, and solid freshman setter Hayley Bush.

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A quick turnaround sends the Huskers to Bloomington to face Indiana on Saturday, and despite earning a sweep over the Hoosiers the last time they met, the Nebraska coaching staff is taking their third-to-last match of the regular season very seriously. 

“They do a 6-2, they have two good opposites, a couple really good middle blockers and I know they are young on the pin, but their outsides are getting better,” Reyes said. “When you have to scout four attackers on the pin and two setters and two middle blockers, it can kind of be a handful, so just juggling that can kind of throw a coach off sometimes.”

In previous matches against tough, top-ranked teams, Nebraska has struggled to close at the end of sets, and that has been a focus of the Husker coaching staff in practice. Over and over again, the coaches set up a drill where the score is 22-all and the players have to go for first-ball sideouts and close out the set. 

“The girls have started to learn how to have this finish mindset, and against good teams, we can’t expect them to lose the game for us, we have to go out and win the game,” Reyes said. “That just comes with experience. We basically have a couple people that are on the floor for us that have done it before and everyone else is pretty much new and then new to each other. Just them going through it together is probably the biggest thing they can do to improve on that sort of stuff.”

Eventually, Reyes said, the Huskers are going to find themselves facing tied score late in a must-win set against a top team in the NCAA tournament. At that point, whether or not they had a winning record in the month of October or won the conference or earned a top-four seed in the tournament won’t matter.  

“We’re going to find ourselves at 21-all and whoever plays the best and cleanest volleyball is going to win.”

Tune in right here on FloVolleyball to see Nebraska play Purdue (Friday, Nov. 16, 7 PM ET) and Indiana (Saturday, Nov. 17, 7 PM ET).