California Knocks Off Defending National Champions
December 08, 2007 | Volleyball
In the Madison Division I Volleyball Regional Final, sixth-ranked California (26-7) swept past No. 2 Nebraska (30-2), the defending national champions, 30-28, 31-29 and 30-26 Saturday night at the UW Field House.
With the win, Cal advances to the NCAA Division I Volleyball National Semifinals in Sacramento, Calif.
Cal's Hana Cutura led all hitters as she recorded 23 kills in the match. Teammate Angie Pressey followed closely behind with her 20 and had 14 digs for a double-double. Nebraska had only one hitter in double digits as senior Sarah Pavan tallied 16 kills on the night. Jordan Larson was the next leading hitter for the Huskers with her eight kills.
As a team, the Golden Bears overpowered the Huskers in hitting percentage (.323 to .240), service aces (5-3), digs (47-43) and blocks (10-7.5).
Cal will face top-ranked Penn State, who swept BYU (30-23, 30-15 and 30-18) earlier Saturday evening, at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif. next Thursday night.
California Notes
-In Friday's match, California broke the school record for total team blocks in a season with 440. The previous record was set in 1983 with 429 blocks
-Senior outside hitter Angie Pressey had her 13th double-double of the season in Saturday's match
-Hana Cutura moves into 10th for school record of most attacks in a season
-California will advance to the NCAA Division I Volleyball National Semifinals for the first time in school history
-The 2007 Bears currently have the most wins in a season in school history and are 26-7, 12-6 in the Pac-10
-California holds an 11-5 NCAA postseason record with Coach Feller
-This is the Bears' sixth consecutive appearance in the NCAA tournament
-The Bears are on their way to breaking a 2003 school record of .265 for best hitting percentage in a season.
-Current team hitting percentage is .268, and California's hitting in the regional final was .279 in game one, .384 in game two and .342 in game three
-Cutura led the Bears with 23 kills in Saturday's match, followed by Pressey with 20 kills
-Cutura also leads the team in kills on the season with 467
-Pressey recorded 17 digs in the regional final match, for a total of 300 on the season
-Senior middle hitter Ellen Orchard has 184 blocks this season, second best all-time in California school history
California Quotes
Head Coach Rich Feller: 'This team has worked so hard and gotten better and better and better every time we step on the floor. We did a lot of things right this year as far as the training goes, as far as the rest time goes and the execution tonight I think showed exactly how we prepared.'
'It's been an incredible season so far, and it's still going. '
'I didn't feel that we were below any team in the tournament. The pressure certainly is on a defending national champion. As of yesterday's win, we 're in uncharted waters. But I think it gave us a chance to just be relaxed and focus on our game.'
'We're still the underdog I guess. We're going to play Penn State, and we'll be the underdog again. Good.'
Angie Pressey: 'I guess you can't say that it was our match from game one, but we felt like we were in control from that first game ' When you have a hitter get a ball without top spin and knock someone over, that's pretty sweet.'
Pressey on the win: 'Maybe it will hit me when I get back to Berkeley, or maybe it will hit me when I 'm writing my ten page paper tonight. I'm not quite sure, but right now, I'm just ecstatic.'
Pressey on winning the fist two games: 'Yesterday we watched a great team, Michigan State, go out and take two games and we really wanted to just be settled and understand those first two games didn 't mean anything if we didn't win the entire match. So going back into that locker room, we cheered, but after awhile it was kind of silent and we focused. '
Hana Cutura: 'I think that I knew that we had the match when we won, because anything can happen with good teams. After we won the first two matches, I was kinda scared we were going to fall in our game because last night Michigan State had Nebraska and then they lost, so I thought maybe that was going to happen to us. But it didn't.'
Carli Lloyd: 'This is my first time playing on a college team so everything feels great. Every win is great. It felt like another win, just ten times better.'
Lloyd on setting to Angie and Hana: 'It's amazing. You've got two incredible athletes that can knock somebody over. Nobody can stop Pressey, she can jump out of the gym. '
Nebraska Notes
-Nebraska falls to 10-9 in NCAA Regional Finals play
-The loss snaps an 11 match winning streak.
-Nebraska falls to 73-23 all-time in NCAA tournament play.
-Nebraska falls to 2-2 all-time versus California and 30-23-1 versus the Pac-10.
-Nebraska had won 23 of its last 24 matches versus ranked teams. The Huskers are now 86-13 versus ranked teams under head coach John Cook.
-The match marked the second time this season that Nebraska was out-hit (.240-.323)
-The match was the seventh time this year that Nebraska hit under .300.
-Nebraska's senior class (Maggie Griffin, Christina Houghtelling, Sarah Pavan and Tracy Stalls) finished with a career record of 126-7. During their four years, the group went to four NCAA regional finals and two National Semifinals, winning the 2006 NCAA championship.
-Senior Sarah Pavan recorded her 2,000th career kill in game two. Pavan, who became the first Husker to reach the mark, finished her career with 2,008 which ranks fourth all-time in Big 12 history.
-Pavan also finished the year with 498 kills, good for ninth all-time in school history in a single-season. Her 4.38 kills per game ranks sixth all-time in a single-season.
-Senior Christina Houghtelling finished ninth in school history for digs in a single-season with 383.
-Senior Tracy Stalls set a school and Big 12 single-season record with a hitting percentage of .474.
-Junior Jordan Larson tied her own school postseason-record with 12 service aces.
Nebraska Quotes
Head Coach John Cook: 'California played great tonight and certainly put the pressure on us and never let off. I thought our team rallied at times but could never put together a string of points and we didn't play very well at the end of close games and when you get to regional finals, that's what you have to be able to do, is put on pressure and play great at the end of games. Cal certainly did a tremendous job of that tonight. '
Cook on the areas of the game where Nebraska struggled: 'I'm not sure we did anything really well tonight so it would be an all-around, we did it in spurts but we didn't do all the skills very well consistently. A lot of it starts with blocking and defensively and those have been our strengths and you have to give those left-side hitters a lot of credit tonight. Serving, normally we really stress team serving, we were really tentative serving tonight with errors at critical times, which takes the momentum away and we were inconsistent attacking and siding out tonight. Part of that, Cal probably made us feel that way.'
Cook on the senior class: 'The first thing that comes to mind is that they've set the bar so darn high. The last three years ago, we've lost five matches, played for two national championships, won a national championship on probably the greatest stage the history of volleyball may ever see. When you look at this group academically, they're all 4.0s, three academic All-Americans, they won the Life Skills Award as a team. Maybe I might get a job as a sportswriter because I'm not sure we'll ever top this group of seniors. Once the disappointment of tonight goes away, they're going to have some incredible accomplishments and memories and have set a great legacy at Nebraska, especially Nebraska volleyball.'
Tracy Stalls on her career coming to an end: 'I wouldn't say it has set in. I'm still kind of shocked, but I think what hurts the most is having to leave this group and this team. I'm disappointed in how we played. I'm disappointed that we weren't able to max out and that was the goal. As a result of that, we didn't reach as far as we wanted to go. The thing that hurts is having to say goodbye to this season of my life and this special group of people that I love so much and it's just been a pleasure. It 's been a hard four years, but it's been so rewarding. That's all I have to say right now.'
