Top-ranked Nebraska sold so many tickets so fast for Sunday's volleyball smackdown with 11th-ranked Hawai'i it set an NCAA regular-season attendance record on the previous athletic director's watch.

Sunday's rare mid-season non-conference match, which starts at 5 p.m. in Lincoln (noon Hawai'i time), sold out last Wednesday. A week later, former Cornhusker football coach Tom Osborne started as interim athletic director, replacing Steve Pederson —a casualty of Nebraska's recent football futility.

In contrast, volleyball in Lincoln is setting a series of remarkable records. The 'Huskers won their third national championship in December before the largest crowd (17,209) ever to watch NCAA volleyball.

That came at Qwest Center in Omaha, an hour up the road. Nebraska has five All-Americans back from that team, including Sarah Pavan and Christina Houghtelling, the last two national players of the year. The Cornhuskers are hammering teams in rapid succession, winning their first 17 matches with the loss of only one game.

Fans are buying tickets at the same warp speed. Nebraska drew the largest NCAA regular-season crowd in history (13,081) to Qwest for its Sept. 2 sweep of Penn State — now the second-ranked team in the country. That record will be broken against the 16-3 Rainbow Wahine.

Bob Devaney Sports Center will have its first volleyball sellout Sunday. The school sold all 13,136 seats and expects to squeeze in as many as 13,500 when students (who are on midterm break this week) show up for free standing space.

This will happen 23 hours after celebrating the 100th straight sellout at Nebraska Coliseum, in a Big 12 match against Kansas tomorrow night. It is only the second time in NCAA history a women's team has hit triple digits; UConn's basketball streak ended in 2005 at 113.

The NU Coliseum, which dates back to the 1920s and is fondly known as the Brick Barn, holds just 4,030. The 'Huskers average attendance in 2005 was 4,124; last year it was 4,137. This year single-match tickets for the season, which cost from $8 to $16, sold out in 45 minutes.

Hawai'i and Nebraska are usually 1-2 in national attendance, with Wisconsin always close to the 'Huskers and neither team near the 'Bows, who have averaged about 7,000 since moving into the Stan Sheriff Center (capacity 10,300) full time in 1995.

Nebraska is nudging closer this year — UH is averaging 6,440 and NU 5,124 before this sellout — but is still not close to making money. Nebraska media relations director Shamus McKnight figures the program might be "a couple hundred thousand" short of becoming the sport's second revenue-producing team. The Rainbow Wahine have made as much as $500,000 for UH in previous years.

"The biggest thing is travel for us," McKnight said. "We charter (planes) for our trips and the Big 12 has a Wednesday-Saturday schedule. We're getting closer, but I'm not sure if we'll ever hit it while we're at the Coliseum. We're just in position now to lower our losses."

Why not play at Devaney all the time? Nebraska coach John Cook calls it "logistically impossible," with six sports practicing and playing in that arena. There are also concerts and the state fair, which is Labor Day weekend — preseason volleyball's prime-time.

In contrast, the NU Coliseum belongs to the three-time national champions, who book it from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. everyday and take a school-record 64-match home winning streak into tomorrow's match. "We love the Coliseum," Cook said. "If an arena can be perfect for volleyball, the Coliseum is it."

NOTES

Sunday's match will be shown live on Nebraska Education Television, with the broadcast brought back to Hawai'i on pay-per-view (digital channel 255). ESPN Radio 1420 AM will also broadcast live.

The Nov. 11 match against Utah State, originally scheduled for 8 p.m., has been moved up to 7 p.m.

Kamehameha Schools graduate Kristal Tsukano, a sophomore libero at San Jose State, became only the second player in school history to collect 40 or more digs in last week's five-game loss to Idaho. Tsukano finished with 42 digs, the highest dig total by a WAC player this season.

Nevada senior Teal Ericson was named Sports Imports/AVCA Division I National Player of the Week. Ericson hit .500, with 24 kills, in a win over Fresno State last week. She added 14 kills in a sweep of Utah State that lifted the Wolf Pack into third place in the WAC. For the week, she averaged 6.33 kills a game and hit .433. She is the second Nevada player to ever earn national player of the week honors.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.