Nevermind Penn State's national semifinal match with Nebraska is about an hour northeast of the campus in Lincoln, Neb. Seeing the grandeur stone exterior of the Qwest Center in Omaha means more than a Cornhusker crowd advantage.
The 18,300 seat arena will bookend senior Christa Harmotto's collegiate volleyball career -- if not Thursday, than in Saturday's final. Harmotto and fellow seniors Nicole Fawcett and Roberta Holehouse played their first collegiate match in the Qwest Center against Stanford in 2005.
Coach Russ Rose remembers it for a different reason.
"The last time we were there we got beat in about an hour and ten minutes," Rose said. "That's about what I remember about it."
The top-seeded Nittany Lions clash with the No. 4 seed Huskers at 9 Thursday night. The match will be broadcasted live on ESPN2. The winner will face the winner of the earlier semifinal match between No. 2 Stanford and No. 3 Texas.
"Nebraska's always good," Rose said. "There's never a time when Nebraska doesn't have a good volleyball team because they have a good program, they have great tradition, as do all of the teams in the Final Four."
The defending NCAA champion Lions (36-0) advanced to Omaha by knocking off California in three sets. Nebraska came back from a two-set deficit against No. 5 Washington, erasing a 9-3 deficit in the fifth set sprint to 15 points.
Nebraska coach John Cook called it the most incredible comeback he's seen in volleyball.
"I was thinking about what I would say at this press conference," Cook said about the 9-3 deficit back on Dec. 13. "I thought it was over."
Now, Cook and his Huskers (31-2) have their hands full trying to slow down an NCAA record six American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-Americans.
Lions' junior outside hitter Megan Hodge said the home advantage the Huskers will have backing them is very real even this late in the tournament against a veteran and tournament-tested team like Penn State.
Harmotto still gets nervous before a match, and she's taken the floor 136 times. More than 17,000 tickets have been sold, and red will almost certainly dominate the crowd inside the Qwest Center, forcing the Lions to create and feed off their own energy -- even if that means falling behind.
Against Cal last Saturday, the Lions trailed 19-13 in the first set before storming back to win 25-21. That deficit, Harmotto said, caused the Lions to play each point as a team.
"I was standing on the sidelines, and it was 19-14," Harmotto "I was like, 'Oh this is 20-25, the drill we do in practice."
The Qwest Center will be a far cry from the South Gym in Rec Hall. But Harmotto couldn't stop smiling when thinking about thousands of people screaming at her, saying she embraces those types of hostile environments.
Hodge, too, isn't worried about her teammates' hunger to repeat as national champions.
"At that point in time, it's the Final Four," Hodge said. "If you don't have energy to get through a match, you don't need to be there."
