Whalen: Parity in college athletics has finally reached volleyball

It's class warfare in college athletics right now, and the proletariat is winning.

For a long time, a person could have some idea of who was winning the national championship in any given sport. UCLA and maybe 10 other programs had a shot at a national title when John Wooden manned the sidelines. Now, Butler and Virginia Commonwealth have three Final Four appearances in two years. Oregon and Wisconsin will play in the Rose Bowl, Texas A&M is women's basketball champion and Creighton may beat North Carolina in men's soccer. Fresno State, Oregon State and South Carolina have won five out of the last six CWS Titles and Boise State may be the key to the Big East keeping its major conference football status.

These weird times have largely missed volleyball, in which four teams (Nebraska, Stanford, Penn State and USC) have won 15 of the last 17 national championships. Now, two are gone: Nebraska and Stanford lost at home to Kansas State and Michigan, respectively. Penn State and USC are largely untested but, lurking in the Sweet 16 are the rabble: K-State and Michigan, Ohio State and Kentucky, Florida State and Minnesota.

So what this means is that coach John Cook needs to adjust how his teams play. Cook has always said everyone's good in volleyball – now, it's true. Now, winning a title at NU is more than being the best of the fearsome foursome. It's about being better than Purdue or Illinois or whoever else has a Final Four team in a particular season. It's also about not overlooking Kansas State, so that Big Ten-champion Nebraska isn't at home watching seven teams it beat playing in the regionals.

But, honestly, the Huskers should still be in it.  

The only set KSU played demonstrably better than NU was in the fifth set, ironically enough. But the match shouldn't have gotten that far; had the Huskers been able to serve properly, the first set would have been theirs. NU had a minus-six service margin in the first and won rallies not ended by a service ace/error 21-18. But they had four more service errors and two fewer aces. If the Huskers don't do that, they're off to Hawaii. NU also missed on three set points in the third set (as did KSU). If the Huskers don't do that, they're off to Hawaii.

But flying off the handle is hardly appropriate. The signs were there, even if we didn't want to see them. By my count, NU did worse than expected in 10 of its 30 matches, whether it was just scraping out a win against an inferior opponent, like New Mexico State or St. Mary's, or losing winnable matches, like Colorado State, Northwestern and Kansas State. The bottom line: from Sept. 17 to Oct. 28, NU was the best team in the country. At all other times, they were just another good team.

And another reason people shouldn't freak out too much is that an upset like this isn't unheard of. The easiest comparison I have to NU's loss is to take No. 1 Kansas' loss to Northern Iowa in the second round of the 2010 men's basketball tournament, only make it happen in Lawrence instead of Oklahoma City.

But it's not like upsets like this have never happened in Nebraska athletics before. Anyone remember when the baseball team got a No. 6 national seed before losing at home to Manhattan and San Francisco? Or the 2001 Colorado football game? Or the 1996 Big 12 title game? If we're being honest, the 30-win women's basketball team from two years ago probably should have made it past Kentucky in the Sweet 16.

These upsets happen – just, generally, not to the volleyball team. And that, I think, is where the shock sets in. They're just so reliable that casual fans can wait until the Sweet 16 to care about the team. Where else is there a program like that in any sport? Maybe Connecticut in women's basketball or North Carolina in men's soccer, but few others.  

The key is how the Huskers respond to such upsets. As you may have noted when they were originally brought up, the baseball team struggled badly after its upset episode, as did the football team in 2001 and the women's basketball team, for various lengths and reasons. Yet the 1997 football team won the national championship.

So, really, there's only one question to be asked: What now? While NU still has massive advantages, the last two years have shown that the field is catching up to the elite in college volleyball. Will NU falter like the baseball team, or use this moment to its advantage and run through people like the `97 Huskers did?

Regardless, fans should all learn some lessons that Cook would have said before we banked on a Husker victory. The first two rounds aren't exhibitions. You can't think "it's just K-State" anymore, even if it is just K-State. Playing at the Coliseum does not guarantee victory, though it does help.

And if the regional is particularly expensive, wait until after the second round to book that flight.

Sean Whalen is a senior News-Editorial Major. Reach Him at Seanwhalen@

dailynebraskan.com

Whalen: Parity in college athletics has finally reached volleyball