Here’s something you don’t hear very often from Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook — who has coached the Huskers for 22 years and had 31 All-American players in that time.
Cook said he hasn’t really coached a player like freshman Whitney Lauenstein. He says that because of the way Lauenstein moves around the floor and hits.
Lauenstein played another great match in fourth-ranked Nebraska's 25-20, 25-12, 25-22 win against Arizona State on Saturday.
Nebraska went 3-0 on the weekend to win the Ameritas Players Challenge and improve to 5-0.
Lauenstein, the freshman right-side hitter from Waverly had 11 kills on just 17 attempts with a .529 hitting percentage in the match.
Over the last two matches she’s hitting .483. Lauenstein has a lot she can improve at, and with Nebraska’s depth she may not even play the next match. But when her attacks are good they're really good.
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“She’s just a very fast athlete,” Cook said. “I can’t explain it. I’ve really never coached anybody like her — how she moves and how she hits. She’s very fast and fluid. She flies. She gets up there. She’s got a really fast arm. So it’s hard to block her. The only time you can get her is if she brings it down. But when she gets up there and gets big she’s going to go over the block, and she hits it hard. She’s got a lot of heat on that.”
In Nebraska’s dominating second set Lauenstein had five kills on seven attempts.
Lauenstein and classmate Lindsay Krause have each been playing right-side hitter, and that may keep happening this season.
“Whitney wants to play, and that’s been the message is you got to be consistent and show it every day,” Cook said. “So we’ll let her and Lindsay battle this week.”
Lauenstein was the final piece of Nebraska’s No. 1 recruiting class. She played on the JV team at Waverly as a freshman before becoming one of the best players in the state her final two seasons.
Each day at Nebraska she’s learning a lot from playing with the Huskers' older players.
“It’s really nice to have Lexi Sun back (this season),” Lauenstein said. “She’s a really good role model, and I think she has really good composure and she teaches me how I can utilize my shots, and you don’t have to rip every single ball. I also like (setter Nicklin Hames). She really brings a fire to the team.”
Nebraska found its best rhythm of the season Saturday with Hames setting a balanced attack. Sun led the Huskers with 14 kills. Lauenstein added 11 kills, Ally Batenhorst had nine, Kayla Caffey seven and Callie Schwarzenbach five.
Batenhorst didn’t have any kills on nine attempts in the first match of the weekend against Omaha, but Cook put her back in the starting lineup on Saturday. She didn’t play the first weekend of the season due to a minor injury, but during the first two weeks of practice Batenhorst had been on pace to play a lot.
“These guys got to know we believe in them,” Cook said. “I gave (Batenhorst) another shot and she really took advantage of it. It was really good to see. You can see she creates a lot of problems up there.”
Nebraska had a season-best .350 hitting percentage and held Arizona State to .127.
Nebraska has begun to settle into a one-setter offense with Hames as the starter after she returned from an ankle injury.
“It was great to win the tournament, and we played better as the tournament went on and we got to see a lot of players play this weekend, which was one of our goals,” Cook said “Now we’re going to have to start refining a little bit of a lineup because the competing just gets better this next week.”
Nebraska’s players on the all-tournament team were Lexi Rodriguez, Caffey and Hames (who was named MVP).
In the other match of the tournament on Saturday Omaha beat Georgia in four sets, 25-17, 25-22, 22-25, 30-28. The Mavs were led in kills by Marriah Buss, a Lincoln Lutheran graduate, with 16.
It was a nice win for Omaha (2-3) after losing two five-set matches on Friday.
Nebraska has a big match Wednesday against Creighton. The Bluejays (6-0) are expected to move into the rankings this week after a 3-0 win against defending national champion Kentucky on Saturday.