LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For the fourth-consecutive December, Pitt volleyball watched as its opponent rushed the floor, celebrating a NCAA Semifinal win, and more importantly, a chance to play in the National Championship Game.
A Pitt team that had national title aspirations and lofty expectations, with perhaps the best team in program history, stumbled against a conference rival that surged behind a raucous home environment at the KFC Yum Center.
Pitt defeated Louisville twice in the regular season and most recently on the very same floor in four sets, making the 3-1 loss that much more painful for head coach Dan Fisher and the Panthers.
“On our side, we’re hurting,” Fisher said following the loss. “It was one of the tougher losses in my career. It was tough because it was the best we’ve played since we’ve been in the Final Four.”
For sophomore stars Olivia Babcock and Torrey Stafford, it comes as their second time feeling the emotions of a Final Four loss, but for the seniors in Cat Flood, Valeria Vazquez Gomez, Emmy Klika, Rachel Fairbanks and Nisa Buzlutepe, their careers will end without reaching Pitt’s first-ever National Championship.
“I mean, they’re struggling right now like the rest of us,” Babcock said about the seniors. “Leading up to this match, we really talked about putting it all out there. Just because we didn’t get the result we want doesn’t mean that we didn’t do that. I couldn’t have asked them to do any more. They put their entire heart on the court today.”
As the No. 1 overall seed, the Panthers played as so in the first set, pulling away from a gridlock to a comfortable eight-point lead. The Panthers would close out the first set 25-21, much like it did in the first two meetings against the Cardinals this season.
However, the next two sets will be talked about for years as the Panthers missed out on multiple opportunities to close out the Cardinals. In the second set, Pitt led 23-22 with a kill from Babcock, who recorded a new career-high 33 kills in the match, before Charitie Luper delivered three decisive kills for the Cardinals to pull out the 25-23 set win.
The third set was even more gut-wrenching as Pitt led 23-19 and could not close it out. Even with four opportunities at set point for the Panthers, they failed to capture the final point and ultimately fell in the set after a block from Nayelis Cabello and Phekran Kong deflected off of Vazquez Gomez and out of play.
“We beat them in transition by an enormous margin, but they were absolutely unstoppable on first ball, and we couldn’t get enough of those,” Fisher said. “Then you guys all saw that what happened the second and third set. So that was hard for us to swallow.”
With the home crowd of 21,726 — a women’s volleyball semifinal record — Louisville roared out to a 9-3 start in the fourth set and never relinquished the lead as Pitt looked uncomfortable playing arguably its worst set of the season.
“Well, they hit .516, and we just weren’t able enough to stop them on first ball and even on medium passes on first ball,” Fisher said. “Obviously digging ourselves in a hole didn’t help. I think we were down 9-3, and it ended up 25-17. So we just never were able to dig out of that hole.”
Leading up to the final set, Louisville recorded a combined four aces. The Cardinals capitalized on four aces alone in the fourth set and dominated offensively against a timid Pitt defense.
“I think we were just — in the fourth set we were being a bit passive with those plays. Normally we would have been more aggressive. I feel like their momentum was slowing us down. I don’t think we stopped fighting, but I think those plays, we were trying to rely on other people to do it for us,” Babcock said.
Despite the Final Four disappointment for the fourth year in a row, Pitt has made it known that it is one of the elite programs in the country as the Panthers closed the 2024 season with a 33-2 record.
“It certainly feels like a missed opportunity, but the season does and I’m really proud of this group. They laid it all on the line and showed the warriors that they are,” Fisher said.
“We just went for it,” Stafford added. “I think that’s Pitt volleyball. We’re going to go for it.”
