It’s not a rivalry, exactly. But when more than 8,000 people come out on a Sunday night to watch the state’s two NCAA Division-I volleyball teams face off at the Qwest Center Omaha, it’s definitely something.
Creighton and Nebraska play each other annually in volleyball, basketball and baseball, and those games are always seen, by the fans, at least, as some of the biggest ones of the year.
The Creighton-Nebraska baseball game on May 15, 2007, had an attendance of 18,316, and outdrew three Major League Baseball games the same night. Sunday’s volleyball match drew 8,037, the third-largest crowd for an NCAA volleyball game this year.
True sports rivals are usually in the same conference or are evenly matched. Creighton and Nebraska are non-conference opponents, and, with the possible exception of baseball, the recent series have been pretty one-sided. Nebraska holds a 9-0 record against Creighton in volleyball, while the Creighton men’s basketball team has won eight of the last nine regular-season meetings.
However, that doesn’t mean nothing’s at stake. Though the Missouri Valley Conference is strong in volleyball, playing the No. 2 team in the country is a unique challenge for the Jays.
“You don’t get the opportunity to play someone that’s 6’5″ every game,” Creighton senior setter Korie Lebeda said.
Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth said her team began preparing for Nebraska at 3 p.m. the day before, the same thing it does for every game. Still, the kind of momentum and attention that comes from upsetting a top 10 team would be welcome by Creighton fans, if not the players themselves, and Nebraska certainly doesn’t want its first loss to come from unranked Creighton.
NU coach John Cook denied that a rivalry exists per se, but he did say that for the players who grew up in Nebraska, meeting former teammates and opponents was like going back to high school.
“There were 11 Nebraska kids on both teams, which makes a major statement about volleyball in our state,” Cook said on Sunday. “We’ve gotta be proud of that.”
The presence of three-time national champions Nebraska and Creighton, who had two consecutive 21-10 seasons, in the state has been instrumental in producing the large amount of interest and knowledge Nebraskans have for volleyball.
“The fans in Nebraska know the game of volleyball,” NU junior middle blocker Kori Cooper said. “It’s always great to come play in front of an all-Nebraska crowd.”
Maybe the fans make more of the Creighton-Nebraska rivalry than the teams themselves do. But in the end, aren’t the fans the ones for whom rivalries are most important?
Nebraska, as the state’s largest public university, attracts a much larger fan base than Creighton. But for a Bluejay fan who sometimes feels engulfed by the “sea of red,” even at a Creighton home game, the amount of blue in the stands on Sunday was encouraging.
Before any Husker fan gets too smug about their “Coliseum East,” let me just remind everyone that basketball season begins in four weeks.