No Matter What Happens, Let's Enjoy Pitt's Current Dominance
It's something I'm telling myself, so I thought I would tell you too.
For this Monday edition of the Bandwagoner’s Guide, I want to stop and show some gratitude for the run that Pitt Volleyball has been on.
I’ve learned a lot about the sport over the last few years. On average, an NCAA volleyball team only wins the point about 43% of the time when they’re serving (and thus, 57% of the time when they’re receiving… math!).
Pitt’s far from average. The Panthers win 53.4% of their service points and 69.6% of their serve-receive points — both #1 in the nation (thank you, Evollve!). But there are still times that the Panthers find a new level, like Friday night when they won an astounding 72.6% of their service points against an opponent that hasn’t otherwise been a pushover.
Virginia stepped into its 100-year-old Memorial Gymnasium with a 17-4 record, feeling the support of a packed house and the momentum that came from its best start since 2003 and assuring its first winning season in nearly a decade. While the Cavaliers could still pull off an upset or two to get onto the NCAA Tournament bubble, Pitt wasn’t going to be one of those upsets.
Pitt silenced the gym pretty quickly — a 21-2 run to start a match will do that. The service runs by Valeria Vazquez Gomez (8 straight points) and Olivia Babcock (10 straight points) brought immediate pressure on Virginia in that opening set, and the home team never really found its footing. The final score of 25-9, 25-9, 25-15 accurately showed the dismantling.
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Sunday’s match at Virginia Tech, with a lot less buzz in the gym and a lot more playing time for Pitt’s backups, was not nearly as dominant but still resulted in the team’s 18th sweep in 22 matches this season.
Being a Pitt volleyball fan over these last several years has meant becoming accustomed to winning. We’re talking about a team with a 160 wins and only 19 losses since the start of 2018. This year they’ve been even stronger, notching 36 consecutive set victories to start the season, obtaining its first ever #1 ranking, and earning the surest sign of a complete team — being #1 in both hitting percentage (.332) and opponent’s hitting percentage (.112).
In a sports landscape so laser-focused on championships and creating narratives out of playoff performances (both things I’m guilty of — and hell, just last week I was asking you all to be ready to travel for the Tournament), it’s on us as fans to stop and smell the roses.
Quoth Andy Bernard in the series finale of The Office: "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”
These *are* the good old days for Pitt. While they have every opportunity to get better, with their best recruiting class ever (Olivia Babcock, Torrey Stafford, Blaire Bayless and Haiti Tautua'a) currently sophomores and a class of five players that could have an even higher ranking (Isabelle Hoppe, Ayanna Watson, Trinity Thompson, Lola Sageer and Izzy Masten) set to arrive in 2026… when you get right down to it, how do you look much better as a team than Pitt already looks here in November 2024?
Yes, expectations will continue to rise in tandem with success. This year’s NCAA Tournament will be a pressure cooker with most experts seeing Pitt and Nebraska on a National Championship collision course. This newsletter will have a lot more to say on that in the weeks ahead.
But with Pitt heading home to play four straight matches against schools that have been traditional athletic powers in the ACC — UNC, Duke, Florida State and Miami — I’ll be taking a moment to be grateful for what I’m seeing at Fitzgerald Field House. Let the sellouts continue and the success keep building.
