straight set

No. 1 Nebraska displayed every skill that’s made it a powerhouse program — the offense attacked every part of the court, defense never gave up on the ball and the fans showed up at the Galen Center.

In front of a sellout crowd of 9,072, USC’s nine-match win streak came to an end with a straight-set loss to Nebraska (26-0, 16-0 Big Ten).

“I just felt like the game was a little too fast for us today,” USC coach Brad Keller said. “I thought it was slow for them and fast for us.”

The No. 17 Trojans never led and were limited to a 20% point scoring percentage throughout the match. USC (20-6, 11-5) led in attacks, but its 16 errors were costly during the 25-13, 25-16, 25-20 loss to the Cornhuskers.

USC’s Adonia Faumuina taps the ball over the net against Nebraska at the Galen Center on Sunday.

(Kim Ly / USC Athletics)

“Nebraska is the real deal,” Keller said. “They are really, really good and they showed that today from point one to the very end. They’re hitting .400 and they held us down to .156, that kind of shows you a lot of where they were.

“Go Big Red Nation deserves credit and they deserve the fact that they travel and they support their team.”

USC outside hitters London Wijay, with 10 kills, and Adonia Faumuina, with nine kills, kept the Trojans in as much as possible throughout the three sets. After a break, the Trojans came out with some extra gusto to make things a little interesting for the Cornhuskers.

“We literally had nothing to lose,” Faumuina said.

During the match, Nebraska made 10 errors, with five spread across the first two sets. The Huskers moved the ball quickly around the court and if they made a mistake, the team quickly adjusted. In the third set, a ball bounced in the air close to the floor seats. Nebraska saved the ball and it later led to a kill by Virginia Adrian that put the Huskers three points from closing out the game.

Nebraska kept USC guessing, while exploiting the weaker USC back court and capitalizing on attacking errors. Throughout the match, they kept hitting the ball to the back, usually resulting in a point for them.

“There were some plays they made that I haven’t seen in a while and that was normal for them,” Keller said.

As the Trojans look ahead to their next match against Oregon on Wednesday, Keller doesn’t have a silver lining take-away from the loss.

“I love my team, I don’t care what their age is,” Keller said. “There needs to be a standard and we need to execute and if we don’t execute, we go back to the drawing board, we work on those things, we get better and we execute.”

Wijay said the loss exposed how much harder the Trojans must work to achieve their goals.

“I don’t want to brush off this loss,” Wijay said. “I think it’s good to use as fuel for the next game. It was a good test to see how far we are to get to that level. And I feel like the silver lining is to make sure that we’re all gonna be in the gym working even harder to make sure that we pursue the balls.”

“I think it made me more hungry to want to win,” Wijay added.