2025 Husker Preseason Road Map

The Huskers are notorious for scheduling a gauntlet of a non-conference schedule and the 2025 season will be no different. There are a ton of different ways to look at scheduling for non-conference and every team does it differently. You can try to schedule matches you would expect to win (AKA middle to bottom of the road teams). You hope to end up going undefeated through pre season and get to head into your conference schedule unbeaten and with high confidence. The downside to this is that you are not battle tested. Your team doesn't know exactly what it will take to win tough matches, which is especially important for Big Ten teams given the strength of the conference. The other con of “easy” preseason scheduling is that you probably wouldn't play any teams that made the NCAA tournament the prior year which would lead to your team having a lower RPI which is a factor in tournament seeding. On the other side of the coin… what the Huskers repeatedly do… is schedule a TOUGH non-con and battle test the heck out of your team. The pros of this would be that you get to play in big moments and possibly win really big games. Winning against other tournament teams with high RPI’s will help increase your team’s RPI and help with seeding in the tourney. BUT, if you don't go .500 in your season, RPI doesn't matter. To even qualify for the NCAA tournament you have to be at least .500 in your record. If your preseason schedule is too tough and you lose a lot of those games, you risk potentially being under .500 after the season and not making the tournament at all. There's two major sides of the coin and neither one is necessarily right or wrong, simply different.

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The Huskers obviously chose to go the gauntlet route. They open their schedule and the 2025 volleyball season with Pittsburgh followed by Stanford… to call that a big weekend is an understatement. I personally love the tough weekend. Coming up I will do a little more of a breakdown of each matchup but I think the Huskers have a big opportunity to come out of this first weekend 2-0 against TOP teams in the nation. Pitt is a final four team the last 4 years and Stanford is consistently making deep runs in the tourney. These would be two huge wins, but I think to call the weekend a win the Huskers need to walk away at least 1-1. 

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I think the next biggest matchup is against the Wildcats in Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Personally I can't wait to watch this game… I may need to book a flight to Nashville (bummer). This will be a huge weekend for the Huskers playing on a really big stage. Most of them are used to this but if there's some freshman on the court there could be some nerves! I really think Kentucky is going to be a force this season so for the Huskers to take them early that will be a big confidence win and help BIG time heading into B1G season. 

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Utah is always a sleeper team to me. This is a match that Nebraska needs to take seriously. The rest of the competition at the Husker Invitational won't be too tough so if they overlook the Utes they could be in trouble. 

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The final tough match of the preseason in my opinion is the in-state battle against the BlueJays at the CHI health center in Omaha. Creighton has never beat Nebraska so their team will be coming to PLAY especially after last season's 5-setter in Davaney. Nebraska has to know that they have a target on their back no matter what gym they walk into, especially that one. I am expecting the Huskers to walk away with the win over the Jays but, similar to Utah, they'll need to focus up and take them seriously. 

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The non-con will be tough but the Huskers could come out unbeaten. They’ve done it before. It will take a good amount of focus and with a good amount of veteran talent on the roster this season I really think they can do it. In the lead up to these matches I’ll do more of a breakdown on some goals for the matches as well as my predictions. Until then, sit tight… it's almost Husker volleyball season!