Pitt is Winning Again. But are the Panthers Final Four-worthy?

It may seem too early to ask that question in the headline, just one week into September. Volleyball's Final Four is more than 14 weeks away!

However: Just like in basketball, your tournament résumé covers the whole season.

We'll have a better answer for Pitt's championship-worthiness in a couple of days down in Fort Worth, Texas. It's the closest thing to a Final Four preview that you'll see all year: Pitt vs. Kentucky, followed by a Top 4 battle of Louisville vs. Texas, all in an unfamiliar big arena airing on ESPN.

Pitt will get its opportunities against top foes like Louisville and Stanford. But a win over Big Blue on Wednesday at a neutral site would be an asset in Pitt's résumé, especially seeking the all-important Top 4 seed that gives you home-court advantage all the way until the Final Four.

And you can certainly call Pitt the underdog against Kentucky, as the Wildcats were just a couple points away from beating #1 Nebraska in Nashville, then went into State College and swept defending champs Penn State (who will now be without star setter Izzy Starck, to whom we send our best wishes). Kentucky features the best 1-2 outside hitter combo in the country in Brooklyn DeLeye and Purdue transfer Eva Hudson.

Fortunately for Pitt, they are finally starting to look more like a team capable of beating an elite opponent – finding their rhythm after their opening-weekend struggles in Lincoln.

Getting the Offense Together

Pitt enters the big match in the Lone Star State with the momentum of a four-match winning streak. The Top 25 victories over TCU and Arizona State on Labor Day Weekend showed a Panthers team getting back into its offensive rhythm. Quote of the week from Arizona State head coach JJ Van Niel after getting swept at PPG Paints Arena: "I thought they kicked our ass."

Returning to Fitzgerald Field House this past weekend also brought back some a vintage Pitt attack. The "best setting all year" (sayeth coach Dan Fisher) from Brooke Mosher and others pushed Pitt to a .313 hitting percentage in the win over Pepperdine, including a combined .600 hitting from middles Ryla Jones and Bre Kelley.

"We've been working a lot on our setting," Fisher said after Friday's win over Pepperdine. "Brooke has really been connecting in practice with our middles very well, but we haven't really been setting as much in game. It was really nice to see all their work pay off statistically... their hitting percentage reflected what we're doing in practice."

We can believe that Pitt is Final Four-worthy once the team is consistently getting offense beyond Olivia Babcock, and we're starting to see some signs of that:

• Blaire Bayless has nearly doubled her hitting percentage from last season (from .158 to .310) and currently owns a better percentage than Babcock's .229, which is understandable given how many double-blocks and triple-blocks Babcock is drawing
• Four Pitt players recorded double-digit kills in Sunday's win over a pesky Jacksonville team: Bayless (13), Ryla Jones (11 on .769 hitting), Babcock (10) and Dagmar Mourits (also 10)
• Pitt shook off some early struggles Sunday to hit .609 in Set 3 and .560 in Set 4 in the victory over Jacksonville.

"We feel like we have a team that we can be dangerous with multiple hitters," Fisher said. "We have a new setter, and it has taken some time. Just really pleased with the attitude and the work that is going into that connection."

The only caveat to all of the above is that Pitt's worst set of the week came in the first set Sunday against Jacksonville, when Fisher kept Babcock out. Pitt had 7 hitting errors in that opening set, the same number they had across the final three set victories. They'll need to perform better to be able to spell Babcock over a long season.

To Serve Man

The ultimate Pitt serving specialist Cat Flood was in attendance this past weekend (along with recently-graduated libero Emmy Klika) and got to see the new core of servers Pitt has established, a group that is getting better at generating point streaks from the service line:

• Starting setter Brooke Mosher has been the team's strongest with a team-high 16.7% ace rate, collecting 12 aces in the last 4 matches (good for her, bad for my wallet). Her jump topspin has provided more reward than risk so far.
• Olivia Babcock's jump topspin serve is still a bear to pass, though she switched to more traditional serves this weekend, perhaps to manage the heavy load of big jumps and bigger swings.
• Izzy Masten should be terrorizing Indiana high schoolers right now, but luckily for us she is providing sharp serves and dynamite defensive efforts that put a charge into the Fitz crowd:

• Fellow defensive specialist Mallorie Meyer became a machine of serving runs late last season, and that's still the case in 2025. "Every time Mal steps on the line, I think she's going to go on a run," said Olivia Babcock on Friday. Meyer has only one ace so far, but she forces bad passes on the other side.
• Haiti Tautua'a is still finding her niche after returning from injury, but serving specialist may be part of it. Pitt has won 53.3% of their points with her serving (according to Evollve), which is the highest success rate of any Panthers server.
• Marina Pezelj has mostly spent her freshman year playing back-row spots at outside hitter, including serving spots. She'll likely keep the role as long as she maintains an error rate below 10%.

“[Serving] is something in preseason that I didn’t think we were very good at,” Fisher said, as quoted by Ava Nicholas of The Pitt News. “I challenged the team to be … a team that could keep other teams stuck in every rotation.”

Applying service pressure to Kentucky early and often will play a huge part in an upset bid for Pitt, and it appears Fisher now has his lineup of servers to make that happen.