LINCOLN - There were moments Wednesday when John Cook considered reaching for the air sickness bag, and no, they weren't when Nebraska's top-ranked volleyball team seemed destined to drop a game to Iowa State.
The real queasiness came earlier, when Nebraska's adventuresome head coach strapped into an FA-18 Hornet with one of the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels.
“I never lost it, but I was very, very close,” Cook said, reflecting on his flight following the Huskers' hard-earned sweep. “They have a bag there ready to go, and I was seriously thinking about (using) it.”
The Blue Angels, in Lincoln for the Guardians of Freedom air show this weekend, are a squadron renowned for both graceful aerobatic and fast-paced, high-performance maneuvers, the very things that Nebraska's volleyball program strives for.
Yet, for the fifth consecutive match, Nebraska was amiss in the early going. Ahead 17-11, Iowa State found itself in a position to take a game off Nebraska for the first time since 1994, back when current Cyclones coach Christy Johnson was a junior setter for the Huskers.
Iowa State (9-3, 1-1 Big 12) still led 19-14 before the Huskers were finally able to put something together. Nebraska came out of it with a tidy 31-29, 30-20, 30-17 win before an at-times restless sell-out crowd at the Coliseum.
“It seems to be the theme so far this year, to start off down and then see how tough we can be or how strong we can fight back,” said NU senior Dani Mancuso. “That's definitely something that cannot happen any more. That's something we have to work on and we have to fix.”
Nebraska (10-0, 3-0) did make strides in other areas. Days after Cook scribbled out the disparity among the number of attacks for Sarah Pavan and Jordan Larson and the rest of the team, Mancuso managed 28 swings against Iowa State, the most she's had in a three-game match in two seasons.
Pavan still led Nebraska with 15 kills on 35 swings, and Larson added her sixth double-double of the season with 11 kills and 11 digs. But Mancuso provided eight kills and Tracy Stalls was solid all-around, providing eight kills to go with season highs in digs (seven) and blocks (eight).
Freshman Kori Cooper came off the bench late in game two and produced two kills in her only swings. Cooper replaced Amanda Gates, who in spite of a great week of practice continued to struggle. With two errors to offset both of her kills, Gates' hitting percentage dipped to .138 this season.
As a team, Nebraska hit just .250.
“We're not really improving right now, and that has me concerned,” Cook said.
As for his flying adventures, Cook told of climbing 10,000 feet in six seconds and other maneuvers that literally knocked him out cold.
“He flies the thing down to 103 knots - a car can go that fast,” Cook said, “then he flattens out and turns on the afterburners, and we went to mach point-9.”
Much the same could be said for Nebraska, which rattled off seven straight points to take its first lead in game one.
“It's something I really don't have too much control over,” Cook said. “It's something they're going to have to figure out.”
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