Texas And Nebraska’s Longstanding Volleyball Rivalry Will Renew In Las Vegas

On Sunday afternoon, Texas’ and Nebraska’s women’s volleyball teams will face each in the regular season for the first time in a decade. There wasn’t this kind of gap between matches before, however: the Longhorns and Huskers have an intense rivalry spanning decades, tied in part to the creation of the Big 12. At the Players Era Volleyball Showcase in Las Vegas on Aug. 30, the two will jump right into the new season by renewing that rivalry.

Nebraska and Texas had their first meeting back in 1981, less than 10 years after each program had begun, and just like on Sunday, it was hosted in neutral territory. The two played a pair of matches in the Oral Roberts Invitational on Oct. 17, with Texas winning both: the Longhorns would eventually be crowned the 1981 champions in the final season playing under the Associate for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women banner (AIAW), while the Huskers’ program was already part of the NCAA at this point; 1981 would mark the lone campaign that the team wasn’t invited to the 20-team NCAA Division I tournament at the end of the regular season, and this despite its fourth-straight unbeaten season in Big 8 conference play.

In the 1982 Oklahoma Invitational, Nebraska would collect its first win against Texas, 3-1, but that would be the last victory for the Huskers against the Longhorns until Nov. 5, 1988 — both teams were already powerhouses by then, with Nebraska losing in the national championship in 1986 to Pacific, and Texas winning its second title later in ‘88. Nebraska would once again lose the national championship game in 1989, this time to Long Beach State — it took until 1995 for that to change… and against Texas.

That squad, led by First-Team All-American and American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Co-Player of the Year Allison Weston, was playing for more than just a championship in the moment. It was also playing for bragging rights within a soon-to-be-formed conference. For the 1995 championship, Nebraska was representing the Big 8, and Texas the Southwest Conference, but that was a temporary arrangement: Texas was one of four schools that had committed, back in Feb. 1994, to join the Big 8 and make it the Big 12 in 1996. Nebraska and Texas, two mainstays of women’s volleyball in the midwest, two of the teams that had shown the sport could thrive outside of the West Coast, would now be in the same conference vying for supremacy.

Nebraska won 31 straight matches to end the season: the Huskers won the opening game, lost the second to Stanford, and then didn’t taste failure again. Texas was the No. 2 team in the country and had won its two previous national championship games, while Nebraska was hoping that, for the Huskers, the third time would be the charm. It was, and now these two would be in the same conference going forward.

And what a run the pair had in the Big 12. Nebraska would win the conference in 1996. Texas would win it in ‘97. The Huskers would then take it in 1998 through 2002, and again from 2004 through 2006 — this stretch was interrupted by a single Big 12 regular season championship by Kansas State, but flanking that were a pair of Nebraska national championships, in 2000 and 2006. In 2007 and 2008, Texas and Nebraska tied for conference championship, then the Longhorns won it outright in ‘09. The Huskers would once again come out on top in 2010 — it was their final year in the Big 12, as now it was their turn to switch conferences. Nebraska joined up with the Big Ten in 2011, and remains there to this day.

With Nebraska gone, Texas, somewhat unsurprisingly, dominated the Big 12 in the Huskers’ absence. The Longhorns won 12 of 13 Big 12 conference regular season titles before leaving for the SEC in 2024, with national championships in 2012, 2022 and 2023 and three national title losses, as well. That 2023 championship came against Nebraska, which the Longhorns also defeated in the regional final in the delayed 2020 season as well as in 2021 — the two no longer had conference games, but still played the occasional non-conference matchup and faced each other on the sports’ biggest stage on multiple occasions. 

All-time, the two have been evenly matched, with Nebraska ahead 25-23 thanks to dominating in Big 12 conference play, 2-12, making up for the initial losing streaks to the Longhorns in the 80s. The pendulum has swung back in Texas’ direction, though, with the Longhorns winning seven of the last 10 matchups between the two.

Nebraska had its own post-Big 12 success even if direct competition against Texas hasn’t gone as well of late, becoming national champions in 2015 and 2017, while losing in the 2018, 2021 and 2023 championship matches. The Huskers were the favorite for the 2025 title, and came into the regional final against Texas A&M undefeated before the Aggies upset them and ended their season, as well as the chance to be the second-ever Nebraska squad to achieve an undefeated championship season, joining the 2000s Huskers. Maybe not coincidentally, the last two undefeated teams standing in Division I last season were Texas and Nebraska, with the Longhorns losing on Halloween to … Texas A&M.

Texas’ 2023 victory over Nebraska for the national championship marks the last time the two have faced each other, though, until this weekend, when the No. 2 Longhorns and No. 1 Huskers square off. There is the rivalry to consider, as well as the shocking way 2025 ended for both: both teams lost in their respective regional finals in significant upsets, with 1-seed Nebraska falling to 6-seed Texas A&M and 1-seed Texas to 10-seed Wisconsin. A win against a longtime rival — one the other hasn’t seen in a few years now — would help to wash away the taste of that defeat. But as has so often been the case with the Longhorns and Huskers, only one of these teams is going to walk away on top.