Nebraska seeded No. 7 in NCAA Tournament, lands in Louisville regional

Nebraska learned its path to another national championship during the NCAA Volleyball Tournament selection show Sunday night.

The Huskers are the No. 7 overall seed and landed in the Louisville Regional, with the possibility of facing the Cardinals if both teams advance through the first three rounds. The Cardinals are the No. 2 overall seed and top-seeded team in the region.

Being a top-eight seed, Nebraska will host the first two rounds of the tournament in Lincoln. The Huskers will take on Delaware State (24-6) in the opening round at 7 p.m. on Thursday and then face the winner of Miami (19-10) and Kansas (18-10) at 7 p.m. on Friday.

Miami and Kansas play at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. The Hurricanes are the No. 7 seed in the region.

Delaware State is making its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The Hornets earned its automatic qualifier after clinching the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Championship title. They are one of four teams to be making their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.

No. 1 Louisville, No. 2 Nebraska, No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 Baylor are the top-four seeds in the Louisville quadrant. If the Huskers make it past the first two rounds at home, their most likely opponent would be the Ducks.

This is the 18th straight NCAA Tournament that Nebraska will host the first two rounds in Lincoln.

“Delaware State. I don’t know a thing about them. I don’t even know their nickname,” head coach John Cook said. “…Right now that’s our focus. We’re glad to be playing and I think we’re playing Thursday-Friday. That’ll be interesting. Short week. The team’s fired up.”

Nebraska got the short end of the stick Sunday night, being the last team to know its postseason fate, although large cheers could be heard within the Devaney Center when the Huskers learned they would avoid both the Texas and Wisconsin regionals.

Cook doesn’t remember playing the first two rounds on back-to-back nights, but it could pay dividends down the road when the Huskers have to travel if they run deeper into the tournament.

As long ago as the non-conference schedule was, it meant a lot when determining each seed for the tournament. The selection committee took a particular interest in teams’ losses and whether or not they were ranked losses. That worked in the Huskers’ favor and one of the major reasons why they were slotted No. 7 overall.

All four losses for Nebraska came against top-10 teams at the time, with no losses coming from unranked squads.

“Katie George on there talked about iron sharpens iron. We’re prepared to play any team in the country, just based on going through the conference and playing two great teams that are playing really, really well,” Cook said. “It’s a great learning experience, even though we didn’t have success. We also had a lot we had to deal with. It’s still a great learning experience of what we’re going to have to do.”

Like their coach, Madi…