Q&A with Nebraska coach John Cook as Huskers transition into spring

Lincoln Arneal lives in Lincoln and covers Nebraska volleyball for Huskers Illustrated. Follow him on Twitter at @lincoln_VB 

By Lincoln Arneal for VolleyballMag.com

Nebraska’s 2022 season came to an abrupt early end on a Thursday afternoon in December in Louisville, Kentucky. For the first time in a decade, the Huskers failed to advance to an NCAA Tournament regional final after failing to convert several match points against Oregon.

What’s more, the Huskers dropped three of their final five matches to cap off an unpredictable season, ending up 26-6. They began the year as the preseason No. 1, but stumbled down the stretch, finishing second to Wisconsin in the Big Ten. In the end, Nebraska struggled to rebound from losing its emotional leader, Kenzie Knuckles, to a knee injury before the last week of the regular season. All season long, coach John Cook shuffled through more than a dozen lineups as they dealt with injuries and toggled between a one-setter and two-setter system.

We caught up with Cook, who just finished his 23rd year at the helm in Lincoln, a week into the second semester at Nebraska. Cook welcomed six new players to the roster and had just started beach volleyball practices. We talked about last season, what lies ahead, the Whitney Lauenstein-Merritt Beason situation, his thoughts on the ever-changing college volleyball world, and his horse, Bud.

It’s been a month and a half since the season ended, what’s been ruminating in your mind about how things ended? What kind of things are still sticking in your craw?

Well, there’s not really a whole lot to ruminate about because we graduated four players, and Whitney’s gone, so we really lost five starters. So the rumination is, “Hey, half our team’s brand new and we got a good core coming back. Let’s get to work. We better come in and shape and they did.” We had a really great first week. We actually are progressing faster than we thought we would. (Strength and conditioning coach) Brian (Kmitta) is pushing them harder than he thought he could. We started beach and our first match is (February 24).

When I look back on the season, we had a lot of challenges and things we had to work through. I think we, as coaching staff and as a team, did a really good job with it. We were the number one defensive team in the country, and we have never done that before. We got down in the last week and we were playing to win the Big Ten…