Penn State Volleyball’s Winning Streak Snapped By Nebraska In Road Sweep

Posted on by Ethan Kasales

No. 13 Penn State women’s volleyball took a nine-match winning streak into Lincoln, Nebraska, Saturday night, but the No. 2 Huskers swept the Nittany Lions to give them their first loss in Big Ten play.

Merritt Beason and Lindsay Krause led Nebraska (17-0, 8-0 Big Ten) with a match-high 13 kills apiece, as freshman setter Bergen Reilly guided the Huskers to a .269 hitting percentage and added 33 assists and nine digs. Despite out-blocking Nebraska 10-8, Penn State hit .117 and struggled to build much momentum in front of a crowd of 8,590 at the Devaney Center.

Box Score

Jess Mruzik led Penn State (13-4, 7-1 Big Ten) with 12 kills in the loss, but was held to a .073 hitting percentage after taking 55 swings — 35 more than Camryn Hannah, who was second on the team with 20. Hannah had seven kills. In fact, no other player took more than 33 swings Saturday night. Beason and Krause both hit above .300 and made things difficult for Penn State’s defense.

After leading 21-20 late in the second set, the Nittany Lions surrendered a 5-1 run to the Huskers to go down 2-0. Penn State kept things close the first two sets, but ran out of gas a bit in the third. The Nittany Lions will have a chance to redeem themselves when Nebraska visits Rec Hall Friday, November 3 for the annual White Out match at 8:30 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network. Nebraska has won six straight in the series and now leads it 26-11.

Allie Holland had a match-high seven total blocks, five kills, and a dig, making the most of her eight swings. Zoe Weatherington came off the bench and tallied three kills and two total blocks as one of five substitutes for the Nittany Lions. Taylor Trammell and Alexa Markley had two kills apiece, but they didn’t have very many opportunities to swing. Gill Grimes had a team-high 15 digs, while Mac Podraza had 27 assists and four digs.

Although Nebraska had 13 service errors and just two aces, the Nittany Lions had eight errors at the line and zero aces on another difficult serving night for Penn State, an issue that has plagued the team at times this season. Anjelina Starck and Maddy Bilinovic combined for 13 digs. Penn State returns to Rec Hall this Friday at 7 p.m. when it hosts Iowa, a team it swept last Friday at Xtream Arena, in the program’s Team IMPACT Awareness match.