SMU won 25-23, 25-21, 25-18 in Dallas on Tuesday.

Perhaps the loss was a good lesson for a team that accomplished so much last season — a 33-2 record and the Big Ten title — and thought the wins would keep coming with most of its starters back.

In the 25 years that John Cook has been Nebraska’s head coach, he has won 87 percent of his games, with a record of 693-101, and you don’t do that by settling for a loss.

So he doesn’t agree that a loss like Tuesday’s was good.

“I hate losing,” Cook said. “Me personally, if you ask me, we can accept it when we lose. But when we play like we did Tuesday night … big kudos to SMU, but we didn’t fight very hard. What I told (the players) is you can’t let them lose twice. So we’ve got to learn from that and move on and learn from that.”

Nebraska returned to the court on Thursday to continue its three-match week, winning in three sets against The Citadel.

Nebraska plays Montana State (1-3) on Saturday in the final of the Husker Invitational. The game will air on Nebraska Public Media at 2 p.m.

Against The Citadel, Cook played winger Taylor Landfair and middle blocker Leyla Blackwell more often than in previous games.

Cook will likely continue to give the players the chance to show what they can do before settling on a lineup.

“I’m always thinking about what we need to do to get better,” he said. “We’ve done a couple different lineups (against The Citadel). This is what nonconference is for — trying to find our smoothest, most efficient system and who plays where.”

During a team meeting after the loss, the players indicated that they want to do everything they can to reach the level of play they know they are capable of.

“We want to look back at SMU and say this was a turning point in our season,” playmaker Bergen Reilly said.

* Montana State assistant coach Taylor Els is a Lincoln Southwest graduate who played collegiately for Northern Colorado.