It’s still surreal to think that just last season, Dani Busboom Kelly was playing against Nebraska at the helm of the Louisville Cardinals. “You were in the stands when Nebraska was playing Penn State,” former Nebraska coach Terry Pettit asked DBK about the most watched NCAA semifinal. “I have never seen what we saw that night,” added Pettit about Penn State’s insane comeback.

After all, the Huskers looked dialed in, ready to avenge their conference final loss to Penn State. However, that all changed in front of Coach Kelly’s eyes as the Nittany Lions refused to go away in set three and reverse swept John Cook’s girls. Now, a whirlwind of events that started with Cook’s retirement has brought DBK to Nebraska. So, Pettit didn’t miss the opportunity to ask the new Huskers head coach about that fateful night?

“I wasn’t thinking about Penn State or Nebraska, to be honest. I was thinking about Anna DeBeer’s ankle…” joked Dani Busboom Kelly. While Anna DeBeer, who injured her ankle, played a significant role in the Cardinals falling apart in the final, DBK did answer why Nebraska couldn’t recover after losing set three. “To me, it was just… Fear was coming in,” said Coach Kelly, but that wasn’t all.

“The lack of leadership really came out in those big moments,” Nebraska volleyball’s head coach said during the Inside The Coaching Mind podcast with Terry Pettit. The man who got Nebraska volleyball its first national title agreed. While the Nebraska squad had no shortage of seniors like Merritt Beason, Lexi Rodriguez, and more, none of them could halt Penn State’s momentum.

Dani Busboom Kelly explained that she saw this lack of leadership in another game as well. “You know? In game five, Harper passed a ball, and it kind of went straight up, but it goes out of the picture. So, it’s high enough and it’s nice, but it lands inside the lines. It’s like nobody even went for it,” highlighted Coach Kelly, saying that was a problem. And it’s little things like this that she has addressed during the off-season.

Dani Busboom Kelly is fine-tuning Nebraska

DBK’s predecessor, John Cook, told his senior players about the impact they had despite not winning the NCAA title during their time with the Huskers. “I told them in the locker room that the senior class has done some amazing things. They’ve been in three Final Fours. They’ve played for two national championships, and they pretty much have inspired a generation of young players,” John Cook said after that devastating semi-final.

And it shows that despite not winning the title, they remained in the conversation every year. That, coupled with the fact that John Cook brought four NCAA titles to Nebraska during his 25 years with the team, proves that Cook followed a winning formula. And who’ll know that better than Dani Busboom Kelly? After all, she helped Nebraska win one of those four titles under Cook as a player.

So now that the former Huskers player and assistant coach has come full circle, she’s not reinventing the wheel. Yes, the 40-year-old has shifted her assistant coach and even made subtle changes to how the Huskers train. “With Dani having things be a little bit different. Practice plans were different, the way we run warm-ups and everything is different,” Harper Murray said in May.

Part of those changes also features experiments. Dani Busboom Kelly, shifting Andi Jackson to the back line offense, and getting some spectacular results during their spring game against Kansas, could be considered the biggest one of all. However, she’s preserved Coach Cook’s blueprint. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if doing so has ironed out the hesitation that cost NU last year’s semifinal.