The #2 Huskers take on Northwestern just 3 days before welcoming Wisconsin to Lincoln

After beating Penn State in a rather impressive fashion at the Devaney Center on Saturday, the Huskers will travel to Evanston, Illinois to take on the Northwestern Wildcats for a Wednesday match-up.

Nebraska gets a double dose of Northwestern matches this week as the Husker football team will be welcoming the Wildcats into Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Lexi Rodriguez has finally received the B1G Defensive Player of the Week award. She has been amazing all season and this is definitely well deserved after some amazing plays against Penn State.

Rodriguez averaged 4.86 digs/set in the wins over Michigan State and Penn State. She tied her season-high of 18 digs in the match against Penn State. 12 of these came in the first set alone.

As of October 16th, the Wildcats are 9-9 on the season and are 3-5 in B1G play. Their only three wins in conference came against #19 Purdue, Michigan State, and Maryland.

The Wildcats don’t return any All-Americans this season as their only one, Temi Thomas-Ailara graduated.

This has paved the way for Julia Sangiacomo to take over to be the star of this Northwestern squad. Sangiacomo has 259 kills on the season hitting .244 currently.

Junior Leilani Dodson will also be someone the Huskers will need to keep an eye on both offense and defense.

Dodson currently has 148 kills and is hitting .370 on the season. She also adds 73 assisted blocks along with 7 solo blocks.

Junior Ellee Stinson has been a standout DS/Libero for the Wildcats. She was awarded Defensive Player of the Week during the week of September 4th-10th.

Stinson leads the team in digs, right now, with 302 digs on the season. She also averages 4.31 digs/set right now, which is also the best on the team.

The Huskers should hopefully sweep the Wildcats, but they have seemed to play down to their opponents when playing teams that are closer to the middle/bottom of the conference. Hopefully this won’t be the case against Northwestern.

The Huskers will need to continue to play tough defense, like they have been all year to get this win.

Lindsay Krause has been one of the top hitters for the Huskers lately. She had a season high 15 kills against Michigan hitting .519. She will be someone the Huskers will look to to bring home the win.

Merritt Beason and Harper Murray, of course, are other hitters that will make a big difference at the net both offensively and defensively. Murray needs to clean her serving game up though so we will see if Coach Cook will sub Hayden Kubik in a little more because of that.

The match begins at 7:00 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 18th at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Illinois. The match will be available to stream on B1G+.

#2 Nebraska (17-0, B1G 8-0)

#2 Bergen Reilly 6’1” FR S
#5 Bekka Allick 6’4” SO MB
#6 Laney Choboy 5’3” FR DS/Libero
#7 Maisie Boesiger 5’6” SO DS/Libero
#8 Lexi Rodriguez 5’5” JR DS/Libero
#9 Kennedi Orr 6’0” JR S
#10 Caroline Jurevicius 6’2” FR OH
#11 Hayden Kubik 6’2” SO OH
#13 Merritt Beason 6’4” JR OH
#14 Ally Batenhorst 6’5” JR OH
#15 Andi Jackson 6’3” FR MB
#22 Lindsay Krause 6’4” JR OH
#27 Harper Murray 6’2” FR OH
#44 Maggie Mendelson 6’5” SO MB

Northwestern (9-9, B1G 3-5)

#2 Drew Wright 5’11” FR OH
#4 Maddy Chinn 6’3” 5th Year OH
#5 Alexa Rousseau 6’3” SR S
#6 Ellee Stinson 5’2” JR DS/Libero
#7 Leilani Dodson 6’1” SR MB
#8 Averie Hernandez 6’2” SO OH
#10 Lauren Carter 5’10” SO S
#16 Ellie Husemann 6’3” 5th Year MB
#17 Kennedy Hill 6’1” SO MB
#18 Kathryn Randorf 6’1” SO OH
#22 Julia Sangiacomo 6’5” 5th Year OH
#23 Gigi Navarrete 5’6” FR DS/Libero