The College Volleyball preseason poll is out. Let the games begin.
Defending national champ Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield has fired off the first salvo. Sheffield wants to be No. 1.
And he’s aiming at Creighton, Nebraska and Omaha.
Wisconsin, ranked No. 3 in the pre-season, hosts No. 15 Florida on Sept. 16. Sheffield has moved the game to the Kohl Center (17,230) for one specific purpose.
He wants to break the NCAA regular-season attendance record (14,022) set by CU and NU at the CHI Health Center in 2018.
“We’re trying to drive the sport forward,” Sheffield said recently. “I think we’re all looking forward to (Florida match) and, man, we really want to break that record.
https://huskerextra.com/news/volleyball/shatel-let-the-nebraska-vs-wisconsin-ultimate-volleyball-fan-showdown-begin/article_7f6bacd5-9ae8-5c12-9e0d-a298c755bf07.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_HuskerExtra&fbclid=IwAR1KChh2iuvXynDu12nJW_t9XImeUuNyrXeDi1EVLu9Nygz0H-k3ViVN_aMCreighton coach Kirsten Bernthal-Booth said Monday she and Sheffield have had conversations about making it a public challenge between the two states.
Meanwhile, Booth and NU coach John Cook have spoken about pushing to sell out the match between the No. 1-ranked Huskers and No. 18 Jays on Sept. 7 at the CHI Health Center.
The games have already begun.
“We’re going after our fan base and the Nebraska fan base,” Booth said. We’re trying to get some groups, some high school teams in, group rates.
“We’d love to have some things go on between the state of Nebraska and the state of Wisconsin. We currently have the record. I hope it gets broken and I hope Nebraska is the state that retains it. It’s good for volleyball.”
Speaking after his team’s practice on Monday, Cook brought up Sheffield’s desire to own the record. And Cook was fired up.
“We need to sell out our (Sept. 7) match because
Wisconsin is going after the record,” Cook said. “We want that record to stay here.”
Cook wants it so bad he said he would be willing to move next year’s Creighton match to Pinnacle Bank Arena in downtown Lincoln. Previously, he’s been against moving a home match there.
This year’s NU-CU match was supposed to take place in Lincoln but Cook requested the move to Omaha because the 2022 NCAA Volleyball finals are at CHI Health Center in December.
He said the next two Jays-Huskers matches will be in Lincoln. At least one of those could be played in downtown Lincoln.
This could get serious. And fun.