Pitchin with Pritch: Big 10 toughest volleyball conference

Thanks to Coach Devaney and Coach Osborne, the football program at Nebraska was once one of the strongest, if not the strongest, program in the NCAA Division 1.

 Since Coach Osborne’s retirement and an athletic director who apparently thought 9-4 seasons were not good enough, the program has headed downhill in a free-fall. 

Coach Solich had some problems, but he at least was over .500 most of the time and has done well where he is now. 

The men’s basketball program has never been a big winner, only getting to the NCAA tournament a few times and never winning a game once they did make it. 

Coach Danny Nee did have a team that won the NIT tournament and that is a high point of the program.

 Now the coach that seems to be able to get it done is John Cook. Nebraska has one of the finest volleyball programs in the nation. 

The Nebraska women beat Baylor 3-0 in the regional semifinal but lost to Texas in the regional final. That advanced Texas to the Final Four.

Nebraska plays in the toughest volleyball conference in Division 1 of the NCAA. 

The Big 10 had six of the 48 teams to make the cut-down version of the tournament because of covid-19 etc.

 Along with Nebraska, the other Big 10 teams that were still in at the Sweet 16 level were Wisconsin, Minnesota, Penn State, Purdue, and Ohio State. 

Covid played havoc with schedules in all sports this season and some of the volleyball teams that got into the NCAA played less than 10 games. Another team,  Texas State, had played 38, according to the brackets.

Not sure how that happens, but apparently it did. 

Hopefully Coach Cook can crank out another National Championship for the Huskers.

Transfer portal 

The NCAA came out with a rule change that will make it easier for football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s hockey and baseball players who want to do a one-time transfer because now they can do it without laying out a season. 

This past year, there were 1,500 or so football players and 750 basketball players that entered the transfer portal. 

Many of them could get permission to play immediately from the NCAA and some couldn’t. 

I fail to see how much easier this will make it but I would bet that transferring will become a big thing in the years to come. 

Here’s a quote I saw that Nick Saban, head football coach at Alabama, made on what he thought would come from this new rule. 

Saban said, “We’re going to adapt to it and make it work for us. I think what’s going to happen as you see how often in a lot of leagues, you know the good players go to a good team and the bad players leave good teams because they’re not playing. So is that going to make the rich get richer?”

I have a tendency to agree with Coach Saban. Many of the players of today do not have an understanding of what the word “commitment” means. Too bad! 

I can remember when a football player at Nebraska, unless he was exceptional, didn’t play until he was a junior.  Times change.