#1 Pitt Volleyball Gets a Tough, But Not Unfair, Blow in the NCAA Bracket
Plus some good news for fans about the venue for Pitt's home matches
Pitt Volleyball earned the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, emphasis on the word earned.
The Panthers swept #3 Penn State, beat #4 Louisville twice, swept #6 Stanford and finished as the nation’s only one-loss team. Division I Volleyball is full of skilled players and strong teams, especially in an ACC with nine tournament teams, so finishing with a 29-1 record and the top seed is a true accomplishment.
They’ve become the kind of team that gets fancy video reels in ESPN’s selection show and gets (deserved) props over #2 Nebraska from the NCAA selection committee.
“Pitt’s been playing some fantastic volleyball this season — they have the #1 KPI, #1 RPI, and they only had one loss,” said committee chair Danielle Josetti of Marquette. “They have a win over Penn State, who recently beat Nebraska. So if you’re looking at common opponents, that’s how we came to that determining factor that Pitt was the #1 seed this year.”
Winning a National Championship is never easy. The NCAA Selection Committee did Pitt some favors, including keeping those dangerously talented Texas and Wisconsin teams on the other side of the bracket, but it also dealt them a tough break with a potential National Semifinal in front of a lot of Louisville fans.
But the goal for the Panthers is clear: advance beyond your three consecutive Final Four appearances to become National Champions.
“We know we have a team that has the potential to win this year,” said associate head coach Kellen Petrone on the VB Adrenaline livestream. “Hopefully this is the year that we can break through the Final Four, which is an amazing accomplishment anyway, and keep it going.”
Click here for the full bracket on the NCAA website. Once you’ve looked it over, let’s get into it.
The Road for Pitt
Pitt faces the following road to the National Championship match:
First round on December 6: Morehead State (RPI #174)
Second round on December 7: Oklahoma (RPI #32) or UTEP (RPI #38)
Sweet 16 on December 12 or 13: TCU (RPI #16) or Oregon (RPI #18)
Elite Eight on December 14 or 15: Kentucky (RPI #9) or SMU (RPI #7)
Final Four on December 19: Stanford (RPI #4) or Louisville (RPI #3)
While upsets can happen (Minnesota in particular could crash the Regionals party), it would take a shocker for another team to encroach on this path.
Of the four matches the Panthers would play at home — all the way through the Elite Eight — a rematch with SMU looms large. SMU was the only team to beat Pitt this season, in a five-setter in Dallas.
“We didn’t expect SMU to be the 2 seed in our region, but after N.C. State beat them [Saturday] night, we had a really good feeling that they’d be the 2 seed in our bracket if we got the #1 overall,” said Petrone.
Okay, onto the biggest gripe for Pitt fans:
Yeah, it stinks that Pitt could face Louisville *in Louisville* for a National Title spot
You don’t have to like it. I don’t. Pitt is the clear #1 overall team in the nation, and yet they could face a de facto road game in the National Semifinal against Louisville.
Here’s the thing: this was a possibility ever since the NCAA chose Louisville back in 2020 to host this year’s Final Four. Credit to the Cardinals for building their program, earning multiple trips to previous Final Fours, and completing a season worthy of a Top-4 seed that keeps them in Louisville for the entire tournament.
Remember, Louisville is not a lock to advance to the Final Four. Waiting in their path could be a Stanford team that they just lost to (albeit in Palo Alto and in four very close sets). The selection committee didn’t overlook that loss, they simply didn’t think it merited giving Stanford home court in the Regional round.
“Louisville has a higher RPI. They have more Top 10 wins. They have the #1 strength of schedule in the country for the non-conference and overall,” said Josetti, the committee chair. “Although Stanford has the most recent win — we’ve been watching this weekend but we’ve been watching all year and we look at the full body of work — they did split the season and didn’t have any losses outside the Top 5. That’s why we went with Louisville.”
So did Pitt get hosed? Was this unfair? Not really.
Someone had to line up on the other quarter of Louisville’s. I would’ve given Stanford the #4 overall seed and the right to host in regionals, but I’m guessing it was a very close call. Plus, as good as SMU and Kentucky have been, I would have been more afraid of a potential Elite Eight matchup against tall-and-talented Wisconsin or defending National Champions Texas. Pitt’s bracket avoids both blue bloods.
And Louisville won’t be in either of its home gyms for the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight. Their on-campus gym — with a capacity below 1,300 — is too small for the tournament. The KFC Yum! Center is already spoken for with basketball games that weekend. Louisville will instead play regionals at Freedom Hall, an arena they haven’t played in since similar circumstances prompted a move there during the 2021 tournament. That reduces the home-court advantage for a potential Louisville vs. Stanford matchup with a Final Four berth on the line.
I’m also optimistic that Pitt would be able to handle a third go-around against the team I lovingly call L’ville.
Pitt just beat Louisville in the KFC Yum! Center with a crowd that was almost *entirely* Cardinals fans. But at the Final Four, as you see during March Madness, the audience is divvied up — especially in the lower bowl with assigned sections for each of the four participating schools. If Pitt’s players come in with the right mindset, it will be a less intimidating atmosphere than the one they faced last Wednesday.
All of Pitt’s Home Matches will be at the Pete
Petrone revealed to VB Adrenaline on Sunday night that, for the first time ever, the Panthers will play all of their home matches in the NCAA Tournament at the Petersen Events Center.
“We’re stoked about that. We’ve been having incredible crowds this year,” said Petrone. “[We’ll] hopefully have a few more sellouts at the Petersen Events Center, something that we weren’t sure if we’d ever be able to do, and we were able to do that against Penn State this year, and we had a great crowd against Louisville.”
In previous years, scheduling difficulties around home basketball games shifted the second weekend of matches to Fitzgerald Field House. While it’s the usual home gym for the volleyball team, which used that advantage in tournament victories in 2021 and 2023, the athletic department no doubt heard from many disappointed fans last year after those Field House tournament matches sold out in 15 minutes.
As Petrone noted, this season marked the first time Pitt truly packed the Pete (11,800 vs. Penn State and 11,309 vs. Louisville), giving them confidence they could do it again in the postseason. I don’t expect the arena to sell out this weekend (though you could prove me wrong — tickets for the first two rounds are available now), I would expect attendance for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight attendance to push past 10,000 apiece.
All signs point to those matches being on Friday, December 13 and in the evening on Sunday, December 15, but write those dates in pencil — not ink.
Kudos to Pitt Athletics for making this happen. Scheduling around basketball is not easy — look at Louisville moving important volleyball matches to an unfamiliar arena — but it’s worth it. Pitt gaining the #1 ranking in the coaches’ poll in September (and never giving it back) was a publicity boon for the program. They reached unprecedented attendance marks, from the biggest home crowds ever to a record sellout streak of eight straight matches at the Field House.
Now with a few wins they can show the nation, via broadcasts on ESPN and ESPN2 in the regional round, that Pitt truly is a Volleyball School.