No. 1 Nebraska opens its season Aug. 29 in Las Vegas against UNLV, then turns around less than 24 hours later to face No. 2 Texas at the Players Era Volleyball Showcase. The Huskers get the UNLV match at 7 PM CT on FS1 and the Texas match at 2:30 PM on FOX, a quick start that puts the preseason top-ranked team under pressure immediately.
For fans tracking Husker Volleyball, the timing matters because Nebraska enters the weekend as the No. 1 team in the preseason AVCA Coaches Poll and comes off a 33-1 season. The poll gave the Huskers 1,568 points and 57 first-place votes, putting them ahead of Texas, which was No. 2 with 1,427 points. Nebraska also has some momentum from Thursday night, when it swept Florida and SMU in exhibitions at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Teraya Sigler was part of that exhibition sweep in a way that jumped out. She had six kills against Florida, then added seven kills and five digs against SMU as Nebraska hit.339 as a team and held SMU to an.068 hitting percentage. Virginia Adriano and Andi Jackson each had five kills against Florida, while Harper Murray had six kills and five digs against SMU. That is the kind of balance Nebraska will lean on in Las Vegas, where John Baylor and Lauren West will carry the action on the Huskers Radio Network, Huskers.com and the Official Huskers App, with Jack Kizer, Camryn Irwin and Kelsie Kasper on the television call.
The schedule gives Nebraska no soft landing. Saturday's opener against UNLV is the first all-time meeting between the schools, and Sunday brings Texas, the team that swept the Huskers in the 2023 national championship. Nebraska still leads the all-time series 33-25 through 58 meetings, but that edge matters less than the fact that the next game after UNLV is a top-two showdown against a familiar standard-bearer. Nebraska was 44-7 all-time in season openers and has won seven in a row, yet this one begins with a first-time opponent and then pivots straight into the most difficult kind of early test.
That is what makes the opening weekend more than just a trip to Las Vegas. Nebraska finished the 2025 regular season unbeaten, dropped only seven sets overall and reached the NCAA Regional Finals before falling 3-2 to Texas A&M in Lincoln. It also returns three AVCA All-Americans in Andi Jackson, Harper Murray and Bergen Reilly. If the Huskers are going to justify the ranking that put them atop the preseason poll for the 124th week in program history, they will have to show it right away against UNLV and then answer Texas the next day.
