Oregon beats Huskers in five, ending NCAA Tournament run

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - The end of the fourth set will be hard to accept, the Huskers had four match points and did not win any of them before losing to No. 9 Oregon in five 25-14, 24-26, 25-22, 30-32, 11-15. Nebraska does not advance to a regional final for only the fourth time in 23 years under John Cook, ending the season at 26-6. The program also had the longest streak in the country with ten consecutive regional finals appearances.

Here’s John Cook on the missed opportunities at the fourth set, “Well, that’s one of the challenges of running 6-2. When you get into an over 30 (points) game, you’re going to run out of subs. We’ve been trying to protect that, and we had to gamble and go for it. I didn’t want Bekka (Allick) to serve at a deuce game at 24, and she hadn’t served the whole match. So, we had to gamble and go for it, and we lost. But I thought we could win it. Oregon made a couple of great plays to get us to where we had to get to that point and we had chances of winning way before that.”

Lindsay Krause from Skutt Catholic had 16 kills and a career-high six blocks in the first five-set loss of the season. Nebraska won the previous three five setters before this match in Louisville. Nicklin Hames had 24 assists, she goes out with 5,084 career assists, a program record.

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