Great Expectations for Pitt and Fans Ahead of Volleyball's Sweet 16
Even with record-setting tournament crowds, there is more to be done at the Pete
SCENE: Petersen Events Center, Saturday night, around 8:40 PM. Pitt Volleyball is beginning to wrap up a sweep of Oklahoma in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament, and I’m… not really paying attention.
Sure, I’m watching it all unfold from my vantage point in Section 108, but my focus was on was watching the final points of the fifth set of Northern Iowa vs. Louisville on my phone, and I was not the only one.
I had spilled a lot of digital ink on the likelihood of Pitt and Louisville meeting in the Final Four at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center, and yet here was Louisville in that same arena, close to falling in the 2nd Round in what would be the Upset of the Tournament.
The previous night, we had already experienced an Upset of the Tournament in Pitt’s quarter, when 2-seed SMU was outserved and outplayed by 7-seed Missouri. The only team to beat Pitt all season was eliminated, and now Pitt is lined up to face either Mizzou or Kentucky in the Elite 8.
This time, Northern Iowa collapsed: two match points wrecked by service errors, plus two deuce points wrecked by service errors, silver-plattering the match to Louisville in a 22-20 fifth set.
Why am I spending so much of a Pitt Volleyball post talking about *other* matches in the Tournament? Because expectations have changed. Pitt sweeping its first two matches of the NCAAs was baked in to those expectations. By now we can admit that anything other than a trip to the National Championship would be a disappointment, and SMU losing or Louisville losing (so close!) tilts those odds in Pitt’s favor more than how they looked in the Opening Weekend.
We’ll get to a bit more about Pitt’s match against Oklahoma in a moment, but there’s another area where expectations have changed.
Okay, Let’s Talk Attendance
The paid attendance was 5,943 for Friday night’s match against Morehead State, a new program record for attendance in the NCAA Tournament. That record only held up for 24 hours, when it was exceeded by 6,647 for Saturday night’s match against Oklahoma. Those are excellent numbers for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, outdrawing most other schools including Penn State (2,516 on Friday; 2,470 on Saturday) and Louisville (4,416 on Friday; 4,399 on Saturday).
All in all, a nice start for attendance… so why were the vibes off? Where were the fans that packed the Pete for the matches against Louisville and Penn State?
Truth is, getting a sellout crowd during the NCAAs is tough for any school not named Nebraska, Wisconsin or Texas. The structure of NCAA Tournaments is such that schools need to sell an additional pack of tickets to fans and donors quickly. It was only this year that Pitt finally wised up and offered presale tickets far in advance so that season-ticket holders and Panther Club members could lock in seats.
There are other factors at play: holiday gatherings make December a difficult month for many people to add items to their calendar. Every basketball fan knows they can pencil in mid-to-late March for hoops, but that same muscle memory for the first couple of weekends of December hasn’t kicked in for newer volleyball fans.
Pitt made unforced errors: The department opened the entirety of the Petersen Events Center when it turned out that closing and curtaining the upper bowl would have been wise — the lower bowl was big enough to hold everyone for the opening weekend. Also, Pitt only sold those lower-level seats to people who bought all-session tickets, while fans who went online to view one-night-only tickets were limited to the upper bowl. It was a bummer to see so many fans sitting up top when, unbeknownst to them, they could have picked up better seats and helped the atmosphere closer to the court.1
Ultimately, I think raising expectations for fan attendance is a good thing. Three years ago, I was one of only 2,593 fans inside the Pete for an historic victory for the program — Pitt’s first-ever defeat of Penn State in the NCAA Tournament.2 Why were there only 2,593 fans? It was the same night as Pitt Football’s ACC Championship win over Wake Forest. Pitt fans had (understandably) decamped to Charlotte for an even more historic victory. Now we have double the attendance, and it doesn’t feel like enough.
I don’t expect anything close to a packed house on Thursday afternoon, though I won’t be surprised if some volleyball-loving families and fresh-off-work-in-Oakland fans trickle in for the later sets.3 While the match won’t start any earlier than 3:30 PM, a long five-setter in the opening act between Missouri and Kentucky could push the proceedings closer to 4:00 PM. Buy the ticket and arrive when you can.4
But on Saturday? Be there. 5:00 PM. Raise hell. Any consternation regarding Pitt playing regional matches at the Pete instead of Fitzgerald Field House is around the noise and atmosphere. Fitz was a madhouse for the regional final against Louisville. But the same can be true for Saturday against Kentucky or Missouri. It won’t be a rivalry match, but a spot in the Final Four is still on the line. Saturday. 5:00 PM.
Pitt Advances Past Tough Block, Sick Players
Head coach Dan Fisher didn’t seem to mind too much that Pitt needed extra points to beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the opening set 28-26 on Saturday, just as long as they won.
“We try not to be a ‘bad day’ team, [just] a ‘bad moment’ team,” Fisher said.
Oklahoma came out strong with 7.5 blocks in the first set and actually out-hit Pitt .237 to .205, and Fisher admitted that his Panthers “weren’t playing our cleanest.”
“[Oklahoma] came ready to battle,” Fisher said. “I was expecting us to struggle a little bit. They run a really fast offense, I would argue the fastest in the country overhead. They definitely exceeded my expectations on how well they played defensively.”
Pitt adjusted and reduced their attacking errors set by set, including hitting higher to get past a top-10 blocking team led by 6’7” Kari Geissberger.
“They’re really tall, a really physical team,” said Valeria Vazquez Gomez, who ended the night with 10 kills. “We were pretty determined on where we wanted to hit, and then we talked to our coaches and said ‘hit high.’ … It was just a matter of flipping the switch.”
The Panthers also contained Oklahoma star Alexis Shelton, who finished with 12 kills but 10 attack errors for a .059 hitting percentage.
The term “survive and advance” is cliché in any tournament, but Pitt is certainly happy to move beyond a tough week. Multiple players fell ill, and assistant coach Kamalani Akeo wasn’t on the sidelines Friday night (she returned Saturday).
“We, all week long, were struggling with some sicknesses and some girls banged up,” Fisher said. “We found a way to win when we weren’t totally feeling our best.”
While there was no confirmation that it was sickness that kept middle blocker Bre Kelley out of Friday’s match, a persistent bug is the likely explanation. Kelley was back starting on Saturday.
All of this goes to show that, in the midst of all the attention and eyeballs and Great Expectations around the NCAA Tournament, this is still a group of 16 young people. And young people get sick, especially this time of year. Luckily for Pitt, they had an off-day on Sunday and no travel days until the Final Four, while Oregon has to fly across the country to get here for the Sweet 16.
The same is true for this upcoming weekend. If you’re buying tickets through Pitt and you want to sit in the lower bowl: buy the all-session ticket for both Thursday and Saturday. If you can’t go one of those days, Pitt makes it easy to put the extras on Seatgeek or to transfer them to a friend.
That win also lifted a Petersen Events Center-sized weight off the team. Their only two previous Round of 32 matches at the Pete were gutting five-set losses: A 2018 defeat by Michigan with sophomore star Kayla Lund sidelined by injury, and a 2019 heartbreaker to future Olympian Jordan Thompson and Cincinnati, in which Pitt led 11-8 in the fifth set but ultimately fell 13-15.
It’s my firm belief that “Watching an NCAA Tournament Match” should be an excused absence or early dismissal for children. Some of my fondest childhood memories included: bouncing out of O’Hara Elementary School early on a Friday afternoon to head to Damon's at the Waterworks to watch Pitt trash Central Connecticut State, followed a couple years later by my Mom driving us to The Palace of Auburn Hills for a full day of March Madness. Love ya, Mom!
This piece has too many footnotes already, but here we go: Yeah, it stinks that Pitt is playing a regional semifinal at 3:30 PM on a weekday afternoon. This is the price to pay to get all of the regional matches onto National TV. There aren’t enough slots to go around in the evenings during basketball season. Personally I’m glad that Pitt got the earlier session on Thursday. Louisville and Purdue won’t start until 9:30 PM or later on Thursday night — how many families can we expect to stick around for that whole match?