MINNEAPOLIS -- One school is an international brand, known for its countless high achievers in all fields and 117 NCAA championships. The other has no shortage of famed alums, either, but its 20 NCAA team titles are more cherished by the state as a whole because the school itself is so much the center of attention.

Stanford, in mostly sunny Palo Alto, California, vs. Nebraska, in Lincoln, the heartland of America. Safe to say you could never confuse the two places.

When it comes to volleyball, though, they have a lot in common: They are the sport's royalty. When they meet Saturday night for the national championship at the Target Center (9 p.m. ET, ESPN2), you will see programs that consistently have been among the best for decades.

"Some people would probably say it would be better to have BYU and Illinois in the final," Nebraska coach John Cook said of the teams that fell in Thursday's semifinals. "Just because they're different teams. But Stanford's a great program, and we're chasing their national titles and Penn State's."

Stanford and Penn State both have seven national championships and have been in every NCAA tournament since the event started in 1981. Nebraska has five NCAA titles and has been in the NCAA field every year but the first. Whomever wins, either the Pac-12 or Big Ten will be the volleyball champion for the 11th time in the past 12 years. In fact, the only times since 1999 that one of those two conferences didn't win the title were in 2000 and '06, when Nebraska was still in the Big 12, and in 2012, with Texas of the Big 12.

Stanford won the most recent of its seven NCAA titles in 2016 under former coach John Dunning. Jason Mowry/Icon Sportswire

This is Stanford's 16th appearance in the final -- the most of any program -- and the ninth for Nebraska. The programs have faced off in the NCAA final once previously, when the Huskers won their third title in 2006 in Omaha, Nebraska, by a 3-1 score. But they've met just twice since then: a Nebraska win in August 2008 and a Stanford victory in August 2014. In the all-time series, dating back to 1976, Stanford leads 8-6.

As for this season, even though the Huskers were defending champions, the Cardinal have had the bull's-eye on their backs since the start. Stanford has lost only one match: Aug. 31 at BYU. The Cardinal avenged that with a sweep of the Cougars on Thursday. Led by two-time national player of the year Kathryn Plummer, Stanford has all its bases covered with standouts, several of whom were part of the 2016 NCAA title team. Those players also experienced losing in five sets to Florida in last year's semifinals, a match in which they didn't think they stuck together.