By Jasmine Brown
Maryland volleyball wrapped up a four game home stand playing against top 25 Big Ten teams Saturday. The Terps (13-17, 3-13) faced the Nebraska Cornhuskers (22-4, 13-3) as they attempted to redeem themselves after a 3-0 loss to the Cornhuskers in their first meeting. The Terps, after suffering a sweep in the previous match showed more resiliency not folding over like they did in the first half of the season. Maryland would keep the first set close with Nebraska before falling short 25-21.
A lot of service errors made by Nebraska kept the second set close, but the Terps won the second set 25-23. Freshman Liz Twilley had a great game with 15 kills and even included a major solo block to help win the set.
“She was good,” Coach Steve Aird said.
Coach Aird added that he’s getting “greedy” in terms of wanting to win as they have faced top 10 teams in the last week and in the season.
“It shows the level you have to compete at, but the flip side to that playing the top 10 teams doesn’t help you win, I mean they’re good,” Aird said. “This is big girl volleyball.”
The Terps have improved their third set struggles as they tied up the set at 9-9 after a Huskers took a 3-0 lead. Maryland would keep the match close in within one point three times in the match, but the Huskers would pull away all three times, which led to Nebraska taking the third set, 25-21.
Nebraska committed 18 service errors in the match, much less than Maryland would which helped the Terps come within one with a score of 12-11, after trailing 10-5 in the beginning of the set. The Huskers then took a 22-18 lead and would come back and win the 4th set and the match with a final score of 25-18.
“We’re starting to get everyone’s best punch,” Coach Steve said when asked if coaches are starting to realize that Maryland is pretty good. “People are starting to throw around the Ohio State match as a program changing win, but we are starting to compete with the best teams in the country so that’s the good news.”
The Terps are set to play Minnesota on Wednesday, November 18th at 7 p.m. This will be the start of two road games against ranked teams in the Big Ten.
