Twenty minutes after Kansas’ 3-0 loss to No. 1 Nebraska on Sept. 26, Jenna Kaiser stood in front of a handful of reporters at the Horesji Family Athletics Center.

Wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, with sweat still drying on her face, Kaiser, a freshman outside hitter, tried to convey to the reporters the challenge of going from high school volleyball in Wichita to playing the No. 1 team in the country.

“Is this the best team you’ve ever played against?” a reporter asked.

Just as the question was asked, Sarah Pavan, a 6-foot-5 right side hitter for Nebraska and the reigning national player of the year, exited the visitors’ locker room.

“They’re the best,” Kaiser said, pausing a moment to glance at Pavan as she walked by. “They’re the best I’ve ever seen.”

Kaiser is only 20 matches into her young college volleyball career, and although Nebraska is undoubtedly the best team she has seen thus far, there’s a chance Nebraska could be more than that. Nebraska might be the best team Kaiser will ever see. The murmurs and questions have already started among coaches and reporters familiar with the NCAA volleyball scene. How good is this Nebraska team? Could it be the greatest NCAA volleyball team of all time?

Nebraska is certainly making its case. When Kansas (10-10, 3-7 Big 12) travels to Lincoln this Saturday to play defending national champion Nebraska (17-0, 10-0 Big 12) at 6 p.m., it will face a team that has put together one of the most impressive seasons in NCAA history. Not only is Nebraska ranked No. 1 and undefeated with 11 matches to go, but more impressively, the Cornhuskers have dropped only one game all season, sweeping 16 of their 17 matches 3-0. Nebraska has a 51-1 game record this season and a 30-0 record in the Big 12. The Huskers dropped their only game in a 3-1 win against No. 7 UCLA.

There’s more. With its win against Missouri on Wednesday night, Nebraska improved to 83-3 since 2005, when Nebraska finished as national runner-up. Nebraska holds a 64-match home winning streak, and has won 27 matches in a row, dating back to a 3-2 loss at Colorado last November.

“That seems like a long time ago,” Colorado coach Pi’i Aiu said.

Aiu has been at Colorado for 11 seasons, and he can’t remember a volleyball team this complete.

“We see a lot of physical teams. We try to play as tough of preseason schedule as we can. And I haven’t seen a team as physical as Nebraska, or play defense like Nebraska,” Aiu said. “They really are the complete package.”

Place in history

With Nebraska playing in a different stratosphere from the rest of the Big 12, the Cornhuskers will find themselves battling less against their league opponents and more against history. Only three teams in NCAA volleyball history have gone undefeated and won a national championship. USC went 35-0 in 2003, Nebraska finished 34-0 in 2000, and Long Beach State finished 36-0 in 1998. The 1998 national player of the year and Olympic gold medalist Misty May-Treanor was the star of the 1998 Long Beach State team.

Aiu said Nebraska definitely needed to be in the conversation with the best teams of all time.

A little luck mixed in

The fact that this Nebraska team is even together took a little bit of good fortune. In 2005, then-junior outside hitter Christina Houghtelling led Nebraska to the national title game and was named the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s national player of the year.

The following summer, Houghtelling was forced to undergo surgery on her right shoulder and left knee. She took a medical redshirt and sat out all of 2006. With Houghtelling out, Pavan, then a junior, stepped in and took Nebraska one win further in 2006. Pavan earned AVCA national player of the year and led Nebraska to the 2006 national title. Now Houghtelling and Pavan are both back as seniors playing alongside three other AVCA All-Americans — senior Tracy Stalls, junior Jordan Larson and sophomore Rachel Holloway.

Kansas coach Ray Bechard thought the 2005 Nebraska team was the best Big 12 team he’d seen, but now he might be changing his mind.

“I think what they’ve got is great seniors in Pavan, Houghtelling and Stalls,” Bechard said.

Kansas junior middle blocker Natalie Uhart has played against some top volleyball programs. Her first two seasons were at West Coast conference power Long Beach State. But even Uhart said she’d never played against a team like the Nebraska team she saw earlier this season.

“Every single player on their team is dominant,” Uhart said. “Some of the other teams I’ve played against like USC — we played Stanford — they have one or two dominant players, but Nebraska is stacked.”

The murmurs will continue as long as Nebraska keeps winning. Colorado’s Aiu said no secret existed about how to beat them.

“You just got to make them play,” Aiu said. “You have to give them opportunities to make mistakes, and try not to shoot yourself in the foot to often.”

So as Nebraska attempts to stay on its historic course, Kansas has an opportunity on Saturday to put up a roadblock. Kaiser, Uhart and the rest of the Jayhawks will attempt to put a blemish on the untarnished record of the best team they’ve ever seen.

— Edited by Tara Smith