Pitt-Kentucky match thread
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I'm volleyball ignorant, but it's wild to me to see a Pitt team in any sport play like that. Just were never out of it.
She may be the best player at this university in any sport since Fitz? Is that too much praise? I really don’t think so
Can they change liberos in between sets? Like could Meyer wear the libero jersey this set?
Blair was transcendent. But I think I agree, at least until Babcock leaves 🙂
I think they both have a shot of wearing red, white and blue in LA.
Yes you can change who wears the libero jersey between sets. Agree that it should be Meyer in it not Flood, use Cat as a normal serving sub and give Meyer some time on defense
yeah, I'd hope her paver has already been engraved, and is ready to be placed in its spot along the walk by the Cathedral after the awards are announced in the spring.
Blair was really the only other one I could come up with, or Donald/Addison I guess.
Donald’s a good one, but those teams were just so mid. I guess Fitz’s teams were too, though.
Also, Stafford is built for this moment. What a block.
Also, Stafford is built for this moment. What a block.
I haven't watched a lot of volleyball, but wow this is entertaining to watch.
Hoping this third set kind of helps them reignite themselves going into the Final Four. They’ve looked sharper in this set than they’ve looked at any point this weekend between Oregon and tonight.
Woohoo! H2P! Celebrate, and then go work on serve receive lol.
Agreed. Let’s hope that third set gave them a little momentum heading into next week. It doesn’t matter if they are playing LVL or Stanford, they can’t start slow like they did today.
The slow start against Nebraska last year just snowballed and they never recovered. They need to be the “hunter” from the beginning.
H2P
Fingers crossed, but I think that they’ve been laser focused on “getting back to the final four” and doing it at home, which I think tightened them up a little bit against Oregon and early against Kentucky (and against Oklahoma, too, to be honest).
Now that they’ve accomplished that goal, I’m hoping that it just loosens them up going into the semifinal and they play like they played in the third set tonight. They’ve played the whole year as the number one team in the polls, but I think they might play the final four with more of an underdog mentality which is where I think they want to be.
Given that we just swept Kentucky to make the final four again, maybe yall won’t be so negative and afraid.
Pitt has made the final four every year that Fairbanks has been here. She's so good out of system, which seems to be most of the time recently. She's going to be so tough to replace. H2P
Not at all.
People will only realize it next year, though. When Fisher is going to be fighting for his life just to get back to the Elite 8 next year. (No shade on Haiti, she’s gonna be great.)
She’s the best female athlete since Trecia-Kaye if she pulls the title on 12/22, she’s #1.
Pitt HOF & name on Varsity walk was clinched long ago.
Well, all except for one guy. He cant help himself
The stats tell the story of this one:
DeLeye had 22 kills on 40 swings and hit .325. She was the best pin on the court today. The key was the rest of their hitters did almost nothing. All hit less than .150. The MB only hit .256 and MBs usually have a high hitting percentage. For us, Kelly hit .500 and Jones hit .667 as MBs.
We overcame a poor match by Stafford. She only had 6 kills and only hit .118. Defensively, they served her whenever they could and she did not have a good match. She was taken out in favor of Griffin and Meyer a couple of times. Klika didn’t have a good match either. I only remember her making two really good plays in the back.
If you look at our stats compared to theirs, you can see why we swept them. They had 11 service errors and 23 hitting errors. That is 34 of our 75 points. Hitting percentages of .209, .108
and .188. We had 7 service errors (5 by Babcock) and only 9 hitting errors. So we only gave them 16 points, less than half of what they gave us. We hit .360, .182 and .500.
In the last set we had 14 kills on 26 swings with only one hitting error. That is extraordinary.
DeLeye had 22 kills on 40 swings and hit .325. She was the best pin on the court today. The key was the rest of their hitters did almost nothing. All hit less than .150. The MB only hit .256 and MBs usually have a high hitting percentage. For us, Kelly hit .500 and Jones hit .667 as MBs.
We overcame a poor match by Stafford. She only had 6 kills and only hit .118. Defensively, they served her whenever they could and she did not have a good match. She was taken out in favor of Griffin and Meyer a couple of times. Klika didn’t have a good match either. I only remember her making two really good plays in the back.
If you look at our stats compared to theirs, you can see why we swept them. They had 11 service errors and 23 hitting errors. That is 34 of our 75 points. Hitting percentages of .209, .108
and .188. We had 7 service errors (5 by Babcock) and only 9 hitting errors. So we only gave them 16 points, less than half of what they gave us. We hit .360, .182 and .500.
In the last set we had 14 kills on 26 swings with only one hitting error. That is extraordinary.
AD. he was the college defensive player of the year. the heisman candidates that year were largely trash. you could easily argue he was the #2 player in college football that season. or at least, the best non-QB player.
and of course, KP was #3 in the heisman voting just 3 years ago. but apparently, he's dead to pitt fans, for some reason.
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Those are all good choices. But she has been the most important player on a team with 4 straight final fours, and she’s been our best player for like 3 years. Not only that, her play goes up in the biggest of moments. I dunno - she’s a special one.
I am a huge fan of Fairbanks but Olivia Babcock is probably going to win National Player of the Year.
After attending the game, pretty surprised to come home and read all the negativity in this thread. I thought this was the best game we’ve played in awhile. Wire-to-wire win in set 1, epic comeback in set 2, easy win in set 3. Feel great about this team’s chances to win it all.
RST:
Totally agree. Even Nebraska didn't sweep Dayton, and they were a much easier opponent. Will be interesting to see how NE does vs Wisconsin (can they win for a third time) and Creighton vs PSU tomorrow. Our win had some moments, but 9 total errors vs 23 was huge
watch the first set if you can get it replayed, even though we were ahead throughout, it was far more because Kentucky was giving up points mostly with SE's than our good play
with their errors, had we played solid on serve receive and passing it would've been a 25-15 set
2nd set obviously started slow, then took an amazing run to overcome down 22-16
most of the negative was early when Pitt should've been able to take far greater advantage
the Kentucky coach post game to some degree said both teams were off in set #1, he is right
to me everyone played better than the previous 2 games especially after that first set and the early part of #2 but Stafford got subbed out and Emmy while better also still missed some that that she had not done all year until the tournament
the one long rally that had the amazing dive by VVG to save started with a weak serve receive and then a later weak pass, 1 each by VVG and EK, but in the same rally VVG had that amazing dive save and EK had a perfect pass to win it
Yeah, if you factor in the accomplishments of the team she's been leading (and there's room for reasonable debate on how much to do that), Fairbanks stands pretty damn tall among any 21st century Panthers.
Kentucky's style is high risk reward. They were serving deep, and when you do that, some will go long. In a similiar fashion, they were hitting deep or around blocks and when you do that, some balls will be out. The story for Pitt was it's serve receive. They struggled the first 2 sets with this and so were out of system more and yet still generated pretty good offense. Pitts scrambling was fabulous and that created a fair amount of the errors on Kentucky's side. What I liked about Pitt in this game is they werent playing tight. Even in the second set, when they could have tightened up, they didn't. A real solid match by Pitt.
Again, at the end of the day now, everyone is good, all teams have weaknesses, and these very good teams will all exploit it.
If people are now expecting flawless play and sweeping a match 25-15 each set, then their expectations will not be met.
Buckle up because it’s going to get even crazier.
If people are now expecting flawless play and sweeping a match 25-15 each set, then their expectations will not be met.
Buckle up because it’s going to get even crazier.
I think people got a little spoiled by beating so many decent teams as badly as we did. The teams we are playing now are a step up, in some cases a pretty big step up, from the pretty good ACC teams we played a lot this year.
You just aren't going to come out an clobber a team like Kentucky in a game like that the same way that you would against, say, NC State in a regular season game.
expecting flawless play isn't the basis for perceived negative commenting necessarily
EK has been very good all year, in this tournament she has not been as good in the first 2 games and better last night but not her usual great
VVG was very good last night, better than or close to as good as all season but was not in the 2 previous games
Torrey was not as good last night as she had been all season
the stastistics sometimes reflect accurately the play but imo not always
Pitt has great talent all over the floor and some weaknesses here and there and a fair objective viewer that knows the game can legitimately post comments here from the television view that would diverge from a person's live view, heck diverge from someone else watching the exact view(TV or live) depending on how good they know the game, the players, the opponents tendencies, etc
there's often over the top criticism and posts that are way off base but much of that is overblown if it doesn't match your perception
I am quite confident that if every poster here was at the Pete watching they'd all be cheering and supporting the girls loudly or in their own way but not yelling out criticism or booing
well 99% confident of that while understanding there's that crazy 1% possibility
EK has been very good all year, in this tournament she has not been as good in the first 2 games and better last night but not her usual great
VVG was very good last night, better than or close to as good as all season but was not in the 2 previous games
Torrey was not as good last night as she had been all season
the stastistics sometimes reflect accurately the play but imo not always
Pitt has great talent all over the floor and some weaknesses here and there and a fair objective viewer that knows the game can legitimately post comments here from the television view that would diverge from a person's live view, heck diverge from someone else watching the exact view(TV or live) depending on how good they know the game, the players, the opponents tendencies, etc
there's often over the top criticism and posts that are way off base but much of that is overblown if it doesn't match your perception
I am quite confident that if every poster here was at the Pete watching they'd all be cheering and supporting the girls loudly or in their own way but not yelling out criticism or booing
well 99% confident of that while understanding there's that crazy 1% possibility
Yes....I was there too. Whatever was going on earlier in the tournament that had fans worried was corrected by the middle of the 2nd set yesterday. I was elated that Pitt got their error rate back to about 6 give back points/set....where it had been all season. This is the most I have been excited since the 1976 Pitt football season which up until now has been the pinnacle of success for Pitt athletics IMO over the last 50+ years.expecting flawless play isn't the basis for perceived negative commenting necessarily
EK has been very good all year, in this tournament she has not been as good in the first 2 games and better last night but not her usual great
VVG was very good last night, better than or close to as good as all season but was not in the 2 previous games
Torrey was not as good last night as she had been all season
the stastistics sometimes reflect accurately the play but imo not always
Pitt has great talent all over the floor and some weaknesses here and there and a fair objective viewer that knows the game can legitimately post comments here from the television view that would diverge from a person's live view, heck diverge from someone else watching the exact view(TV or live) depending on how good they know the game, the players, the opponents tendencies, etc
there's often over the top criticism and posts that are way off base but much of that is overblown if it doesn't match your perception
I am quite confident that if every poster here was at the Pete watching they'd all be cheering and supporting the girls loudly or in their own way but not yelling out criticism or booing
well 99% confident of that while understanding there's that crazy 1% possibility
And Dayton's starting setter was hurt bad although she did come back into the match at some point with heavily wrapped leg. I believe they also said they were playing a middle or a hitter that wasn't even supposed to be available due to injury but they put her in too. I'm surprised Dayton won a set. Marquette took a set from Penn State as well.
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