At 5-foot-8, Angie Pressey was the smallest outside hitter to arrive at the UW Field House for the NCAA Regional final against Nebraska. But the California senior packed the biggest wallop.

Pressey's crushing kill for the final point of the match put an emphatic exclamation point on the Golden Bears' shockingly easy dismissal of the defending national champion Cornhuskers.

The Bears swept Nebraska 30-28, 31-29, 30-26 to advance to the Final Four and a date Thursday with Big Ten Conference champion Penn State in Sacramento, Calif., in their first visit to the national championship weekend.

The Cal victory gives the tournament a decidedly Pacific-10 Conference flavor. The Golden Bears are joined by USC, which will face the winner of the late Stanford-UCLA match.

Pressey and teammate Hana Cutura, the flip side of Pressey at 6-3, dominated the Cal attack as Pressey picked up 20 kills and Cutura 23 as part of the 59 kills for the Bears. Pressey also did her work on the defensive end, coming up with a game-high 17 digs. Cutura was named the regional's most valuable player.

"You have to give those left side hitters credit,'' said Nebraska coach John Cook, the former University of Wisconsin coach. "We knew they were good hitters. If we would have got on them early, we might have been able to make them think a little bit.

"But they got their confidence early. You're going to have a hard time winning matches when you can't stop left side hitters.''

The Bears grabbed command early in the first game, jumping out to a 4-0 lead. But that was not any indication of how tight the game would be. It featured 13 ties and six lead changes.

The big difference was Cal's scrappy defensive play, as the Bears replied to repeated attacks from the Cornhuskers with dig after dig, 18 in all. It appeared as if Nebraska was hunting Pressey, who had eight digs in the game.

When Pressey, the daughter of former Milwaukee Bucks star Paul Pressey, wasn't going to the floor to stop the Cornhuskers attack, she was somehow pulling her muscular frame over the Nebraska block. She had seven kills in the game, second only to Cutura's eight.

Nebraska was never able to get into its offense on a consistent basis. It didn't help that Nebraska had four service errors.

Somehow, the second game was tighter, with neither team able to gain more than a two-point edge. There were 22 ties.

The Bears made it look almost easy in the third game, grabbing the lead for good at 15-14.

"I don't know what to say,'' Pressey said. "Maybe it will hit me when we get back to Berkeley or when I'm writing my (sociology) paper tonight back at the hotel.''