TRAVERSE CITY -- Nebraska showed that the Penn State volleyball team is 'human' after all.
The Nittany Lions showed the Cornhuskers why they're still the champions.
Penn State, which had its string off 111 straight set wins snapped by the Huskers on Thursday night, held off Nebraska 25-17, 25-18, 15-25, 22-25, 15-11 in the national semifinals in Omaha, Neb. The top-ranked Lions (37-0) will meet No. 2 Stanford (31-3) tonight at 8 p.m. in a rematch of last year's championship match.
Just like last season, Penn State's high-powered offensive attack is run through junior setter Alisha Glass, a Leland graduate.
Both Penn State and Stanford had to survive five-set victories to reach tonight's finale.
The Nittany Lions also had to survive playing in front of a 'home' crowd. Nebraska's campus is some 50 miles from the Qwest Center in Omaha.
"We came out strong in the beginning and they battled back," said Glass, who had a season-high 60 assists in the win over the Huskers. "Trying to overcome the crowd was one of the toughest things for us.
"To not have everybody cheering for you -- and to have 17,000 people cheering against you -- was a hard environment to play in. That was hard to overcome."
Laurie Glass, Alisha's mother and high school coach, said the crowd wasn't just big.
"It was a great match," Laurie Glass said. "Nebraska played very well. The deafening roar of the 17,000 red-clad Nebraska fans was overwhelming."
In the end, so was Penn State.
The Nittany Lions, which hadn't lost a set since winning the final game of the 2007 championship match, looked like they were going to post another 3-0 sweep after winning the first two.
But Nebraska had other ideas, jumping out quickly in set three. The Huskers never trailed in the third and scored 11 of 12 points in one stretch to lead 22-9 en route to the win.
Losing the consecutive set streak didn't seem to bother the Lions though.
"Everybody made a big deal out of that and said, 'Oh, how are they going to react to losing,' " Laurie Glass said. "They never really paid attention to that this year."
Alisha Glass said Penn State coach Russ Rose, who was named the national coach of the year by the American Volleyball Coaches Association on Wednesday, had prepared the team for the eventuality that came later rather than sooner.
Penn State was the first NCAA team -- in Division I, II or III -- to go through the regular season without losing a set.
"It's something we always talked about during the season," said Glass, a first-team All-American. "It's not something to lose your head about. Coach always said when you lose your head, you're in dangerous territory."
Nebraska followed that up with a hard-fought victory in the fourth set and led 10-8 in the fifth.
"They had the momentum and we weren't playing well," said Glass, who had posted a pair of early blocks in the fifth set. "The combination of the two was not good for us."
But Nebraska could score only one point the rest of the way and the Nittany Lions closed out the match with a Megan Hodge kill, delivered on a Glass assist.
In addition to her 60 assists, Penn State hit at a .305 clip against Nebraska and a lot of that is a credit to Glass. She also contributed 10 digs and four total blocks, even though Glass was hard-pressed to remember the two big blocks in the last set.
"People keep talking about that (solo) block," Glass said Friday before attending the AVCA All-America/Players of the Year Banquet. "I couldn't even tell you which block it was and what happened."
While Alisha Glass was caught in the flow of the game, her mother recalls both of them.
"She had two," Laurie Glass said. "She had a big block on the outside and then the one on an overpass that she won the joust for."
Unlike Penn State, who won early and late in the second semifinal, Stanford had to play catch-up to beat Texas by a 20-25, 18-25, 25-15, 25-22, 15-13 victory to set up the first title rematch in the 28 years of the Division I women's volleyball tournament.
"I wanted Stanford to win," Laurie Glass said. "I wanted them to come back again."
Her daughter on the other hand, didn't have a preference.
"I like Texas and I like Stanford as well," Alisha Glass said. "It didn't matter to me."
While the final opponent may not have mattered, a lot of people in northern Michigan tuned into ESPN2 to follow Penn State. Laurie Glass said she received text messages during the match and countless phone messages after it was over.
Laurie Glass added two of her sisters, Merri Lynn Bouckaert and Rebecca McKee, came along on the trip in addition to Merri Lynn's husband, Paul Peschel, and four nieces.
So Alisha Glass' family already got to witness a thrilling semifinal victory.
Now just one match remains. One match in a season that began on Aug. 29 in Hawaii.
"The season is long, definitely," Alisha Glass said. "It's been great to get this far again. Our goal at the beginning of the season was to get back to the championship game.
"The ultimate goal of getting there is here. Now there's just one more match to play. This is why we're here."
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