Gritty Louisville back in NCAA volleyball national-title match with 4-set win over Pitt

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — No DeBeer?

No problem.

Not when you have Payton Peterson.

There is nothing like Louisville and Pittsburgh in NCAA volleyball and the Cardinals wrote another chapter in their incredible recent history with a 21-25, 25-23, 29-27, 25-17 victory Thursday night in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship national semifinals that saw an unsung freshman star emerge.

The Cardinals now have a chance to do what no team has ever done, win every round at home when they play in Sunday’s national-title match.

Pittsburgh, rather, made its own history by losing in four consecutive national semifinals.

Anna DeBeer, the Louisville native, the leader whose gritty play has defined the program during her five-year career, went down with a right-leg injury with her team up 2-0 in the fourth set.

And that’s when Peterson, a 5-10 freshman whose mother, Bobbi, is the coach at Northern Iowa, put herself into the lore of the game.

She not only had back-to-back aces that gave Louisville a 9-3 lead, but had four digs and two kills with no errors in four errorless attacks. And the last one put the punctuation point on the match when Charitie Luper made an off-balance set and Peterson overpowered the Pitt block for the match-ending point.  

It sent the pro-Louisville home crowd in the KFC Yum! Center into a frenzy as their Cardinals will play either Penn State or Nebraska in Sunday’s title match.

Louisville improved to 30-5 as it reached the national-championship match for the second time in three years, Louisville lost to Texas in the 2022 title match and last year lost in the regional final to — who else? but Pitt, when the Panthers pulled off a reverse sweep. 

Luper led Louisville with 14 kills, an ace, nine digs and a block. 

Sofia Maldonado Diaz, who combined for 14 kills and 11 errors in Louisville’s two ACC regular-season losses to Pitt this season, also had 14 kills — seven in the fourth set — hit .355 and had an assist an ace, four digs and a block.

DeBeer, too, had 14 kills, an assist, nine digs and three blocks. Cara Cresse had nine kills — four in the fourth set — hit .438 and had six blocks. PK Kong had seven kills in nine errorless attacks and four blocks. Reese Robins had five kills and two digs. Setter Nayelis Cabello had 44 assists, two aces, eight digs and three blocks. Her team hit .320.

Pitt’s season ended 33-2. The Panthers, who hit .316, had won 18 in a row. 

Pitt’s trip to the 2022 national semifinals ended with a four-set loss to Nebraska. In 2022, the Panthers lost in five to Louisville, 15-2 in the fifth, and last year they were swept by Nebraska.

Olivia Babcock, likely to be named the AVCA national player of the year on Friday, had a career-high 33 kills, hitting .385, and had two assists, five digs and two blocks. Torrey Stafford had 18 kills, hit .333, and had three assists, 15 digs and a block. Valeria Vazquez Gomez had eight kills, an assist, an ace and five digs. Bre Kelley had seven kills, hit .312, and had a dig and a block. 

Setter Rachel Fairbanks had a kill in four errorless tries, 53 assists, an ace, 10 digs and a block. Emmy Klika had 21 digs and five assists.

In the first set, Louisville called time down 20-16 after DeBeer’s back-row attack went into the net. At that point there had not been a block by either team. Pitt was hitting .405 and Louisville .306.

The timeout didn’t help, because when Pitt went ahead 22-16 on kills by Vazquez Gomez and Babock, Louisville called time again.

The run extended to five on another kill by Babcock, who finished the first set with nine kills and one error in 21 attacks. Incredibly, neither team had a block in the first set until Kong and Maldonado Diaz combined for one to make it 24-20. 

Neither team had a serving error in the first set.

Louisville called time down 7-2 in the second after a hitting error by Luper, who at that point had four kills and three errors in 19 swings.

Pitt led 9-4 in the second, but Louisville tied it at 11. Neither team led by more than two points the rest of the way. 

The Panthers went ahead 23-22 before Luper answered with three kills in a row.

Louisville took a 24-23 lead on a shot by Luper in which she went high and hit it relatively softly to the end line. Pitt called time but Louisville won a long rally on Luper’s fourth kill of the set.

Pitt built another early lead in the third, going up 8-4, but Louisville rallied again and took its first lead on a kill by DeBeer that made it 11-10. Pitt got a scare when it won a point to tie it at 14 but Stafford went down. A trainer attended to her left leg and she never left the match.

Pitt had a 23-19 lead, but Louisville responded with four straight points.

DeBeer blocked Babcock to tie it 23-23. But Babcock responded with a kill to make it 24-23 before DeBeer did the same to tie it again.

Stafford hit off the block to give Pitt set point but DeBeer did it again, tying it at 25.

Then it was Babcock’s turn as she stuffed DeBeer. Babcock took Louisville out of system on the ensuing serve but DeBeer got a kill anyway and it was 26-26.

Stafford gave Pitt set point again but Luper, back on the front row, got a kill to make it 27-27.

Kamden Schrand aced Vazquez Gomez and Louisville had set point. She went right back at her, the pass was perfect, but Vazquez Gomez’s attempt was blocked by Kong and Nayellis Cabello and Louisville had a 2-1 lead.

Louisville led 2-0 in the fourth set when the Cardinals lost DeBeer. She appeared to injure her right leg and stayed face-down on the floor. She finally walked off with support and was taken to be examined.

She rejoined the team after a few minutes, but there was no reason for her to return to the lineup because Louisville never looked back in her absence. Its biggest lead was eight, the last at 22-14.

Peterson had played in 29 sets all season, the last in Louisville’s harrowing five-set win over Northern Iowa in the second round. It was, of all things, against her mother and twin sister Jadyn. Payton had 31 kills before Thursday.

Earlier this season

When they met in Pittsburgh on October 25, Pitt won 25-21, 26-28, 25-17, 22-25, 15-12. Babcock led with 22 kills, Stafford had 15 and Kelly 12 in 24 errorless swings and 10 blocks, two solo. DeBeer had 22 kills for Louisville, Luper 19 and Robins 10.

Then in Louisville on November 27, Pitt won 25-23, 18-25, 25-20, 25-16. Babcock had 23 kills, two aces, five digs and five blocks, one solo. DeBeer had 14 kills and Robins 10.

Of course, those matches followed what happened in 2023. Louisville swept the first meeting, but at Pitt, the Panthers won in a reverse sweep and then pulled off another in the regional final.

History

Texas swept Nebraska in 2023, giving the Longhorns back-to-back titles. Texas defeated Wisconsin four in the semifinals. Pittsburgh got swept by Nebraska as the Panthers made their third national semifinal appearance in a row.

Just 12 programs have won since the NCAA began holding women’s volleyball championships in 1981: Stanford (9 times), Penn State (7), Nebraska (5), UCLA (4), Hawai’i (3), Long Beach State (3), USC (3), Texas (4), Pacific (2), Kentucky (1), Wisconsin (1) and Washington (1).

Kentucky of the SEC was the only team outside of the Big Ten or Pac-12 to win the crown since Texas of the Big 12 won in 2012 when the Wildcats won in the spring of 2021.

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