Badgers carry 6-3 record at the UW Fieldhouse into last home stretch of the season Friday
The No. 16 Wisconsin volleyball team returns home this weekend to take on Nebraska and Iowa at the UW Fieldhouse. The Badgers (7-5 Big Ten, 18-6 overall) are currently tied for fourth in the conference.
Friday night’s game against Nebraska features free admission for students, and those who attend will be entered into a drawing to win a pair of Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones.
Wisconsin is coming off last Saturday’s narrow loss to Purdue, a team it swept in the team’s Big Ten season debut.
“It was a tough loss. It’s always hard when you’re two points away in the fifth set from winning,” freshman setter Lauren Carlini said. “Looking forward, we have to take it as a good loss I guess and learn from it. One thing we talked about is just using it as fuel.”
The fuel will have to propel the Badgers in Friday’s match against Nebraska, who they lost to in a close 3-2 match earlier in the season.
“Last time we played Nebraska, we went down there and lost a tough battle to them,” senior libero Annemarie Hickey said. “This team has gotten better since then, and we just really want to execute our game plan and really take another shot at this opportunity that we have.”
With 18 wins thus far, and only eight regular season matches remaining, Wisconsin is guaranteed a winning season.
“We don’t necessarily talk about wins and losses every day,” head coach Kelly Sheffield said. “We talk a lot more about our effort and our prep work than we do wins and losses.”
Carlini, who was recently named Big Ten Co-Freshman of the Week, says the challenge is going to be finding new ways to score on these teams in the upcoming matches.
“They kind of know how we play and what our tendencies are,” Carlini said. “I think both teams are going to be really well prepared, and I think it’s going to be a battle.”
This is Wisconsin’s last stretch of matches at home, beginning with Nebraska and ending with a match against Ohio State Nov. 17. Wisconsin has one of the toughest schedules in the Big Ten and, according to Sheffield, this has forced the team to step up their game.
“We want to be a team that improves more than any other team in the conference,” Sheffield said. “We can’t control what other people are doing, but we can control what we’re doing.”
