NCAA Volleyball Final Four

I'm so excited! I got a call tonight from my cousin in Topeka who has an extra ticket to the NCAA Volleyball Championship Tournament in Omaha. One of the girls in her group suddenly can't go. She and five of her thirty-something college girl buddies are rabid women's college volleyball fans, a couple are ex-players, that follow and cheer all the Kansas (KU, K-State, Emporia (my Alma Mater) and Wichita State) teams, they travel all over the place, and they bought a Final Four tour package not really expecting Kansas to get there, but it happened!

If anyone here follows volleyball in the semi-finals the #9 seed Jayhawks upset #1 seed USC by coming back from a 13-9 deficit, scoring six straight points to win the fifth set and the match. One of the most exciting, and unlikely, comebacks in volleyball history.


They got full tourney pass tickets (all three games) and two rooms (so they can have a party room and a quiet room) for four nights at the Hilton across the street. Must have cost a small fortune, but it'll be a great girlfriend party (unless someone "gets lucky") with lots of drinks and talk about kids, Jenny Craig, dicks and boyfriends and family, dicks, WeightWatchers, jobs, kind of like @noodle and her friends.

Probably not much talk about NASCAR or trucks.

Thursday the Jayhawks play the Huskers and Minnesota plays Texas with the title game Saturday night. I can't decide whether to wear a Jayhawk or Husker shirt. CenturyLink Center seats about 20,000 and with Nebraska in the tourney, it will be standing room only! I am so excited, to just fall in to this good fortune.

 

I can't say that I've ever watched much NCAA volleyball, but it sounds like a fun time for you girls.

 

West coast is usually the strongest college volleyball, but not this year. The usual suspects (Stanford, BYU, Washington, USC, Hawaii, Penn State, UCLA) all lost in the early rounds.

 

Current Nebraska Head Coach John Cook gave up the head coaching job at Wisconsin in 1998 to go to Nebraska as an assistant. Two years later he was head coach. I'm learning all this stuff from a bunch of rabid fans.

Nebraska volleyball coaches are a bunch of weirdos. Former Head Coach (1977-1999) Terry Pettit had an undergraduate degree in English, a Masters in creative writing, and was a published poet. In 23 years as head coach, his teams won 21 conference championships and a national championship.
Current coach Cook was an undergraduate History major at San Diego State. Four years later, without an advanced degree, he was San Diego's assistant head coach. He has led Nebraska to the NCAA Tournament in every year of his tenure, including six trips to the Final Four and two national championships.

I'm starting to sound like a fangirl. I've had way too much to drink.

 

Still in recovery, but I had an awesome (four days and nights worth of girls night out) time with my cousin and her cohort, and those girls do know how to party. We saw three great volleyball matches, and watched the Huskers beat Texas in a three set sweep to win the National Championship. We were part of the two largest crowds ever to watch NCAA volleyball, and it was incredibly exciting and LOUD.

Quite a different atmosphere from when I was at the same CenturyLink Center last May for the Berkshire-Hathaway Annual Shareholder's meeting.

I ate too much, drank way too much, and didn't get much sleep. By chance crossed paths with a college professor that I hadn't seen for twenty years, did some catching up. Got "hit on" at a party by a couple of guys that were at least fifteen years my junior, proving that old proverb In Vino Hornyness, or something like that. And us girls drank and talked the time away about most things under the sun, including, kids, husbands, boyfriends, WeightWatchers, sucking dick, kids, Hillary and Donald, drugs, quitting drugs, Jehovah's Witnesses, breast implants, death, and, I'm sure we at least touched on many more topics that I was too drunk or tired to remember. Thus proving that old proverb In Vino Verbiage.

At a rally after the match, one of the Husker Assistant Coaches was talking about how great it was to beat Texas, not because Nebraska fans hate Texas, but because the Longhorns were always talented, always well prepared, always well coached, always attacked your weaknesses, knew and played away from your strengths... So winning against Texas really means something.

I thought; what a classy thing to say about your defeated opponent.

 

C'mon, you can't tease us with that and not expound at least a BIT on each topic.

 

I'm reviving this old thread for any NCAA Volleyball fans.

This weekend, starting in about an hour, three of the top four ranked teams are playing here in Lincoln.

At 8:00 tonight top ranked Nebraska plays #4 Wisconsin and on Sunday afternoon they play #3 Minnesota.

My volleyball fanatic cousin from Topeka is driving up to Lincoln for the 1:00 pm Sunday game. She's staying with us tomorrow night because with the Husker Football team playing in town tomorrow afternoon, there's not a room to be had within forty miles. A good time should be had by all, and I get a free ticket to Sunday's game.

If you get Big Ten Network, the games are on TV. Watch for me Sunday, I'll be the one wearing red!

 

No. 1 Nebraska looked absolutely dominant in this evening's three game sweep (25-21, 25-22, 25-15) of the No. 4 Wisconsin Badgers. I'm now looking forward to the Sunday match!

 

Sunday's match with Minnesota was a great, exciting game. The Gophers won sets 1 and 4, the Huskers won sets 2, 3, and 5. The Nebraska girls play at the Bob Devaney Sports Center which seat 7,907 but also has quite a bit of standing room.

Sunday's attendance was 8,363 and I bet the Fire Marshall was nervous. I don't think I've ever been in a place so loud, Including last year's NCAA Volleyball Final Four.

My cousin, who drove up from Topeka to see the game is quite the partier. she dragged me to a couple of after game parties, (she always seems to connect with those) and I'm getting too old for that much drinking. We had a good time, though, and made arrangements (tentatively, if tickets are available) to meet for the Volleyball Final Four in in December in Columbus, Ohio.

 

Husker Volleyball girls swept Iowa Hawkeyes yesterday to improve to 23-1 for the season. going back to last year they have won 40 of the last 41 games.

 

Volleyball sets 1-4 end with the first team to reach 25 points as the winner, subject to the rule that you must win by two points. So, 25-23 wins the set, but if it's 25-24, yo keep playing until one of the teams comes up with a two point lead. Something like 28-26 is not unusual.

BUT last Saturday in the High School State Tournament a set strung out until finally won at 37-35.

 

We saw a great contest today at the Lincoln NCAA Women's Volleyball Regional. Nebraska gave up the first two games to Penn State and was behind 22-24 in the third. One point away from losing to Penn State in a three game sweep. The Husker girls then scored four straight points to win 26-24, and went on to win games four and five to win the match.

It's the usual Big 10 fratricide in the tourney. Huskers had already beaten the Nittany Lions twice in the regular season.

 

Well, Nebraska lost in the semifinal to their old nemesis, Texas, after already beating them twice in the last year. We decided to stay on (since the tickets and hotel were already paid for) and root for Stanford in the finals, which turned out well. Texas lost in four sets.

Then out into the awful weather (windy, 35 degrees, rain mixed with sleet) back to the hotel and some Scotch and coffee. Forecast is for freezing rain on the road home, so we decided to stay here in Columbus for another night.

I hate cold rainy weather. I'd rather have it be 10 below zero and a blizzard than this 35 degrees and wet and windy.