After Wednesday night’s 1-3 loss to No. 2 Nebraska, Wildcat volleyball coach Suzie Fritz said her team is learning from its mistakes and working to correct them.
    “I thought we had plenty of opportunities that we didn’t take advantage of,” Fritz said after Thursday’s practice. “We realize and understand that. The only way for us to correct that is to do that day-to-day here in practice.”
    Fritz said the Wildcats, ranked No. 18 by the American Volleyball Coaches Association, had a good practice following Wednesday’s letdown, but there is still room for improvement.
    “I thought we were decent today. Not exceptional, but we were decent,” she said. “I thought we practiced well, considering we were handling some disappointment and frustrations.”
    The Wildcats (10-2, 0-1 Big 12 Conference) will look to capitalize on those improvements when they take on Colorado (7-3, 1-0 Big 12) at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Ahearn Field House.
    The Buffaloes, who are coming off a 3-2 win over Kansas on Wednesday, started the season with a 6-0 record before dropping three straight matches in their own Colorado Invitational on Sept. 10-13.
    The match will mark the 43rd meeting between the two teams. Colorado leads the all-time series, 24-18, but K-State holds a 14-10 advantage since the inception of the Big 12 in 1996. The Wildcats swept the Buffaloes in 2007, and they have won eight of the last 12 meetings.  
    Fritz said Colorado, who had a lackluster 2007 campaign, is still a solid team, even if they had trouble winning matches last season.
    “They’ve always been really good until relatively recently,” she said. “They had some struggles last year. They went through last year what we went through in 2006, where they played several five-game matches and lost every single one of them. They were good, but just not good enough. It’s very easy to get yourself in that position in this conference.”
    She also used the Wildcats’ turnaround in 2007 as proof that the Buffaloes shouldn’t be overlooked.
    “We struggled with that in 2006 and came back and had a decent 2007,” she said. “I can’t imagine them having the same struggles they had a year ago.”
    The showdown will mark the end of a six-match home stand for K-State, who hasn’t competed outside of Manhattan since Sept. 6.