The big stage
Pitt opens NCAA volleyball tournament play Friday vs. Iona..
The Pitt volleyball team had a Norman Dale moment during its first practice in Petersen Events Center last week, before playing Georgia Tech in the regular-season finale at the arena.
In “Hoosiers,” the fictional coach walked his undermanned team through the building in which it would be playing in the state championship.
For the Panthers, everything from the atmosphere to the air inside the 12,500seat venue was different from the cramped and cozy confines of Fitzgerald Field House, their usual home gym. Just as in “Hoosiers,” though, the net was the same height and the court had the same dimensions.
What felt like a road setting, even though it’s a fourminute walk from Fitzgerald, quickly started to feel like home. Now, it will serve as the biggest stage yet for a team that been increasingly nudged into the spotlight. Making their third NCAA tournament appearance in as many years, the Panthers do so now as a top-12 national seed that will, if all goes as planned, play host to their first two matches at Petersen Events Center before some of the frenzied home crowds that flocked to see them on their way to a 291 regular-season mark.
“Since the end of last year, we’ve talked about building a team that could go further than [the second round, where it lost each of the past two seasons],” Pitt coach Dan Fisher said. “We feel that we’ve addressed some of our deficiencies in the offseason and really worked on some areas of our game that were weak last year.”
That work begins Friday with a match against Iona, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion. Barring an upset, Pitt’s thirdconsecutive trip to the tournament’s second round will come against Michigan or Navy, the former of which is 20th in the ratings percentage index rankings.
For all Pitt has managed to accomplish this season, the tournament represents another chance to earn respect. In a sport dominated by programs from the Big Ten and Pac-12, the Panthers are the only ACC team among the top 16 seeds. As one of only three Division I teams with fewer than two losses, they were arguably under-seeded at No. 12.
“Everyone talks about how you take one game at a time and one practice at a time, but there’s definitely a bigger motivation this week,” senior Kamalani Akeo said. “Because we hit our goal of hosting, we don’t want to just take that for granted. We need to prove we can make it through, that this is all for a purpose.”
While it has fought for respect elsewhere, Pitt has earned admiration within its city. Its final four regularseason matches accounted for four of the five most-attended matches in program history, topping out with 3,179 fans for a Nov. 11 win against Duke.
Players are expecting much of the same from the NCAA tournament, with Akeo saying she thinks it will be “like nothing we’ve ever played in front of.”
“This year has been crazy,” sophomore Kayla Lund said. “Our team has been something consistent in the city of Pittsburgh. We’ve talked about it with [athletic director] Heather Lyke, that our team has kind of gotten it rolling for all of these other Pittsburgh teams. Football’s doing great. Basketball is ranked [in the NCAA’s NET rating]. Wrestling is doing awesome. All these teams are snowballing now. We’d love for the community to keep hopping on and keep jumping on our train.”
That success has led to a crowded sports weekend for the university. The football team is playing in the ACC championship Saturday night in Charlotte, N.C., which would conflict with Pitt’s potential secondround match, and the rejuvenated men’s basketball team plays Duquesne in the annual City Game on Friday night. If there’s such a thing as a good problem, this is it.
“There’s certainly periods or years where you’re going ‘Hey, there’s nothing to cheer for,’ “Fisher said. “There’s a lot right now. For our program, we’re at a moment to do something we’ve never done before.”