By Nathan Vaughan
While the volleyball team has a record of 2-4 and won only eight of their first 20 sets, its record does not show the difficulty of competition they have faced or how well the team has played against opponents so far.
The Huskies opened the season in Tampa, Fla., playing in the University of South Florida (USF) Invitational. The Huskies went 2-1 in the three game tournament. In the first two games, they won in straight sets, beating Eastern Kentucky (EKU) and Grambling. In the third match, host USF, who is predicted to finish in the top third of the Big East, won in four sets.
“We knew that there were two teams here that we should be able to handle, and one that would be a tough battle,” said head coach Ken Nichols.
During that weekend the Huskies were led by sophomore Britney Brown. Brown tied with sophomore middle hitter Caitlin Tittl for kills while coming in second in aces, digs and sets. She flirted with triple doubles against both Grambling and USF. Tittl also stood out and tied for the lead in kills while leading in aces. During the opener against EKU, junior libero Leah Neubeck recorded her 1000th dig, becoming the 11th Husky to do so. Neubeck led the Huskies during the tournament with 45 digs. Since then, Neubeck has moved into eighth all-time at NU with 1,060 digs.
“It was a great accomplishment,” Neubeck said. “It was a great feeling and it was nice to do it against great competition.”
For the second weekend of the season, NU headed out to California to play in the Cal Poly Invitational. While there they played No. 2 ranked Nebraska, No. 14 ranked Cal Poly and highly touted Tulane.
“I think if we can try to develop our chemistry a bit quicker than we did last year, it should be a great season for us,” Nichols said prior to the tournament. “We’ve got some incredible competition. I think the most challenging tournament Northeastern has ever played in is coming up next weekend. It should be a very good indication of how much we learned from last year.”
NU managed to hold their own even against stiff competition such as Nebraska, ranked No. 2 nationally, whom the Huskies lost to by no more than eight in the three-set sweep.
They next faced Tulane, a game which started off with a thrilling 35-33 win, including 11 ties and three set points for the Huskies. The Green Wave then went on to sweep the next three sets. The fourth set was only a three point differential. During this match captain Lauren DeTurk became the ninth Husky to record her 1000th career kill, and was the only Husky in the match to record double digit kills with 16. DeTurk become only the ninth Husky to ever reach this mark.
The final match of the tournament against host Cal Poly went much the same as the Nebraska match. They kept it within striking distance but were unable to reach the 25-point mark.
For the tournament, DeTurk led all Huskies with 27 kills. Brown was the leading setter, while Neubeck led the way in digs.
“We did play very well and we could’ve played a lot better. We needed to up our intensity and we probably could’ve taken a game from each of those teams at least. There wasn’t a point that I thought we were blown away at all,” Neubeck said. “I think it was a great learning experience, and hopefully we can take that into the [conference] season and come out on top.”
Tomorrow night the Huskies will open the Syracuse Invitational at 7 p.m. against host the Orange. On Saturday they will play Army at 9:30 a.m. and Ohio at 2:30 p.m.
