Here is another fine piece of work by one of our VB experts John Demko…

This past weekend was a rough one for our women’s volleyball team as well as the Louisville team. On Friday Pitt lost to Florida State 3-2. The score in the final set was 14-16. More on that in a moment.

On Sunday Pitt clawed their way to a win over Miami 3-1 with two sets being decided by the same 25-23 score. On Friday against Florida State Pitt had problems with serve receive. Coach Fisher gave up on the 5-1 offense in the second set with the score 12-18 to try to improve the situation. Unfortunately, it was not quite enough. With the 6-2 he started using more defensive specialists.

As the match wore on Julianna Dalton was even used in the back row to try to change the course of the match. Olivia Babcock has a bad day serving which was another reason for the switch to the 6-2. She had 3 errors versus one ace in a total of 5 attempts. The other major problem for Pitt during the match was they were out blocked by Florida State almost 2-1 (10-19).

For the match Pitt out hit FSU by a small margin 0.190 versus 0.184 but in the crucial 5th set the difference was much greater, 0.074 versus 0.184. Given all this Pitt had a very good chance to win the match except for a horrible call in the fifth set. With score 12-13 during a point that was given to FSU to put them up 12-14, FSU’s Kiari Robey came at least one foot over the net and contacted a ball that was not even close to the net and blocked it.

Coach Fisher went nuts and told the officials of his displeasure. He challenged the call even though it was one of the type of calls that cannot be challenged. Volleyball Magazine on their twitter feed even had a video of the point with a comment on how bad the call was. With the score 12-14 Pitt rallied back to 14-14 before losing the set and match with a 14-16 score.

If the call on the point had been made correctly the score at that point would have been 13-13. Pitt winning the next two points would made the score 15-13 with Pitt WINNING THE SET and THE MATCH.

Louisville lost their match on Friday as well to Georgia Tech. This created a four-way tie between FSU, Pitt, Louisville, and Georgia Tech in the standings. With the win over Pitt, Florida State is pretty much guaranteed at least a share of the ACC title due to the scheduling I discussed last week.

The last time a team not named Louisville or Pitt won or was co-champ of the conference in volleyball was all the back in 2016 when North Carolina won it. Florida State last won it in 2012. Pitt against Miami on Sunday got off to a great start for Pitt. In the first set it was 11-1 before Miami got their act together.

From that point forward the two teams played almost evenly. Pitt won the first set 25-15. Pitt won the second set 25-23. Miami won the third set 26-24. Pitt finished of the match by winning the fourth set 25-23. Olivia Babcock had a much better serving day allowing Coach Fisher to stick to the 5-1 offense. Olivia served 21 times during the match with four aces and 5 errors.

That is about the best one can expect with her high risk, high reward serves. With her kills, blocks, and aces she accounted for a third of all of Pitt’s points (24.5 of 75). One thing mentioned by the announcers was that Olivia did not get serious about volleyball until she was in high school. She was leaning to be D1 soccer recruit playing goal keep. She has tons of upside potential!

Miami had a very impressive freshman, Grace Lopez, out of Puerto Rico, who scored 25.5 of Miami’s 67 points. Too bad Coach Fisher did not get her. This week Pitt plays Georgia Tech in Atlanta at 5 PM on Friday. This is the same Georgia Tech team that defeated Louisville in four sets last Friday. Georgia Tech also gave Pitt fits when we played them at Pittsburgh earlier in the season. Pitt had to come back from a 0-2 set deficit to defeat them.

Pitt went from the 5-1 offense to a 6-2 offense in the third set which facilitated the reverse sweep. Georgia Tech served superbly against Louisville even though the stats only show an 8-7 advantage. One player, Bianca Bertolino, had 7 of the aces. Far be it for me to question Coach Fisher and his love for the 5-1 this year, but maybe Pitt should not have our freshmen in the back row trying to receive Bertolino serves.

Georgia Tech also out blocked Louisville 11.5 – 9. Pitt continues to look like an Elite Eight team, at best, for this year’s NCAA tournament. Our freshmen, while playing great most of the time, still have lapses. We also do not have a Final Four middle in the class of Serena Gray. If we lose either of our two remaining middles during the rest of the season, we will be lucky to get past the Sweet Sixteen.

H2P!