Pitt vs Cin WV
- Thread starter oldpanther
- Start date
So frustrating. I wasnt expecting a national championship, but to lose again to a lower seed, it's just so typical pitt. I just had that feeling because we cant have nice things we weren't going to see next weekend.
Regardless, it was a nice overall season. Just ended with such disappointment.
Regardless, it was a nice overall season. Just ended with such disappointment.
I don’t want to play the “Same old Pitt” routine becuase i like this team, i like the players,and i like fish.
But i cant help feeling like I’ve seen this before
But i cant help feeling like I’ve seen this before
Again, I think that the weak ACC hurts them. They arent challenged at all during conference so its very difficult to keep that edge for when a team really brings it like Cincy did tonight. Pitt didnt play well, but Cincy went all Butler/Xavier/Bradley on us tonight
To those of you that are complaining - Do you support the volleyball program in any way or do you just wait until they lose and then complain?
I donate to the Volleyball program which is uncommon among Pitt donors. The lose tonight was terrible. They Choked, plain and simple.
Check your attitude and give Cincy some credit. They played insanely well.
IMO you have to be a real trash bag to only comment on the team after one of their losses. If you didn’t support the team, then STFU.
Kudos to the staff and players for a great season.
Kudos to the staff and players for a great season.
Yeah, next year when we are all complaining about our ranking or our seeding the answer is going to be simple. Cincinnati. And if that's not enough, Michigan.
Cincinnati did play well, but Pitt did not. There were some stretches where we played really well, including a lot of the third set. But every time we put together a good stretch it was quickly followed by a poor one.
Cincinnati did play well because Pitt played very poorly. There passing was subpar and there blocking was nonexistent and when they needed Lund at the end she had two hitting errors. Have you ever played Volleyball? It is very easy to have a high hitting percentage when the blocking is late to form and you are getting free balls all night. Do I have to explain to you what a free ball is? If you think Cincinnati is a better team than Pitt then you are wrong. Earlier in the season, Pitt destroyed Cincinnati. They did it by taking Thompson out of the game - she had 9 kills. They totally lost her tonight and she killed them. Just like Galyard beat us with a kickoff return, Thompson beat us because we forgot how to take her out of the game.
There was one player who legitimately served a 90 mph curveball for a serve. She happened to be serving for the crucial swing of the game where Cincy overtook the lead late into the 5th set.
I said as much throughout the game thread. There were plenty of unforced errors and miscommunications. They played tight like they hadnt been in a big game in months
I could be mistaken but I think Thompson was also hitting right side early in the season which could have played a big factor in that match. Still trying to get over how they hit above .400 in set 2 and lost. That almost never happens to any team.
Her serve was crazy good! She was almost spiking from the service line. And she was so consistently good, even with that really high toss on her serve.
I thought in the thread on seeding, it was suggested PSU though lower seeded was slotted weaker opponents than us.
Then the whole Cincinnati who can they bus to came up.
I get if you are the 4th seed or the 6th you shouldn't lose before the round of eight, but how about getting the seed and the opponents right to facilitate that?
The point that we lost early though seeded 6th supports the idea we were not as good as our record,
You can accept that and still think we didn't get the second game opponent our record and seed merited.
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As hard as that loss is to accept, it is actually much more damaging to our program long-term. At least advancing to the Sweet 16 and losing reasonably to PSU would've shown incremental progress. This loss (the second home loss while hosting) is going to hurt us next season when we will definitely not be as talented and highly ranked. It's pretty unlikely that Pitt will even get to host the first weekend next year, IMO.
I also have to wonder if this "ceiling" is going to cause Fish to look for better options. He seems to genuinely like it here at Pitt, but you would have to imagine somewhere like OSU would give him more budget, better facilities, and none of the anti-Pitt/ACC bias that he's getting now. It has to be deflating to have a nearly perfect season and still not make it out of the first weekend. Hopefully Lyke can see the opportunity to excel in the sport and greenlights some upgrades for him.
IMO, Pitt also needs to stop playing games at the Pete. It looks awesome even compared to some traditional powers like Texas, but the team never seems to perform well there, and I can only imagine they were disappointed with the attendance this weekend. I think that crowd in their comfortable home gym probably would've been a win.
1,300 on Friday and 1,900 last night had to be huge disappointments to all involved.
And to tie it into something else that has been discussed on this board, the 1,300 and especially the 1,900 were clearly more than we've had at a couple of the basketball games, even though they keep announcing numbers around 7,000 for the basketball games.
Definitely. I was there last night. While support has grown, you would think theyd get more support with their success. When people complain why pitt doesnt move forward in any sport, its typically because our fanbase gets complacent after a year or two of success and immediately expects national championships or they just stay home.
I hope this victory heights upgrades come to fruition, but it's going to be hard to get the donations needed when we wont even support a top 6 national seed the way other schools do.
I don't watch women's volleyball. I meant to watch the game last night but forgot. I think the reality is this is just the case of Pitt being the dominant team in what is probably a mid-major league.
I cant believe they got 1300 to an NCAAT soccer game then considering it was an outdoor November event (a nice November night though) directly head to head with a basketball game a few blocks away. I thought Pitt volleyball was far more popular than Pitt men's soccer. This is very surprising. I would have thought 5K/night for volleyball. This is a bad look but I didn't go so I shouldn't talk. I did plan to go Saturday but couldn't fit it in.
I'm not sure why you would think that volleyball is far more popular than soccer, but rest assured it is not. There are far, far more kids playing soccer in this area than volleyball. There are a combined 164 WPIAL/City League schools playing boys or girls volleyball. There are a total of 208 playing boys or girls soccer.
Pitt is a legitimately good team. This is very similar to Gonzaga in the WCC and how they weren't ready for the NCAA tournament and it took them a bunch of years to finally break through and get to the FF. The WCC finally improved and that helped the Zags.
Very disappointing. They had 5,212 combined for last year's tourney. Last year, they actually drew more for the regular seasons matches against ND, Louisville, Duke, and GT than for either of this year's NCAA games. Both nights combined were less than half the attendance of the PSU game at the Pete earlier in the season. The first round game against Howard had less than the Louisville game at the Pete the week prior which was the night before Thanksgiving with no students. Not much of a bump from the FSU game at the Pete either. Attendance seemed down this year over last despite holding on to the #2 ranking all season. Our NCAA attendance, by the numbers, is not indicative of Pitt building a major program following.
Which is disappointing. They have a really good thing going. I hope fisher doesnt look and realize this is the maximum support he is going to get and bolt.
It is growing imo, but after 4 years of sustained success, I'd think it be further along.
I'm going to guess the same will happen for soccer as wel . It's new and shiny right now, but our fans and alumni will get bored and move on. And then question 5-10 years down the road why we cant be a major type program in any sport.
It takes support in college athletics to build a national program. We have shown that we dont want to support the programs at the level needed to remain nationally relevant long term.
But if you played the games at Fitzgerald you would have had a better atmosphere and more of a home court advantage.Hey,they play in a lot of dumps in the ncca tournament.Not all tourney games are played in on campus 12,000 arenas.The Fitz looks pretty good compared to some.But I do understand why they played them at the Pete.
My guess is last year the Fieldhouse was in no condition to host an event, so they paid to outfit the Pete, thinking it was a long-term investment in the program. This year they did retrofit FFH so it actually looks legit, but they had already paid to figure out the Pete, and they thought there was a good chance for a Regional, so they put 3 regular season games there to get the issues ironed out. Then nobody showed up.
At this point, I think they just need to admit there's a pretty hard ceiling on attendance and if they can jam 2000+ into FFH they shouldn't sacrifice the advantage. It's clear the national snobs aren't going to let us into their club, so there's no point in window dressing, just win.
I actually felt like regular season attendance was a little bit more balanced than last year. They had some spikes like the Duke record attendance last year, but there was a decent enough crowd most games this year. I'm not sure what Pitt did to market the PSU match, but they definitely did a great job of it and I don't think there was more than 40% PSU fans at that match. But they didn't replicate that at all for the rest of the year.
FWIW, I thought the fans at the Cincy match were really informed and attentive. Most of the time you see and hear people asking what the hell is going the whole match, but not at that last one. There were people standing and shouting about refs not calling net violations fast enough. It was cool.
In the end, I think VB is going to experience the same "Pitt effect" as the rest of the sports. They get to a certain level and choke, and eventually Pitt's bandwagon contingent stops caring. As I mentioned in my other post, I think Pitt needs to stop chasing the 5,000 attendance dream and concentrate on cultivating that dependable 2,000 crowd that actually has the capacity to give them a home court advantage at FFH.
Outside of four teams (UNL, Wis, Hawaii, and Minne), no one is averaging 4K. Only the top 10 average over 3K. So aiming for an average of 2 to 2.5K, is more than reasonable with expectations of 3-5K for big games. Pitt was 43rd nationally in attendance last year with 1,140 per match, but that was third in the ACC behind UNC and Clemson and behind the conference averages of the B10, Pac, B12, Big West, and SEC. This year Pitt averaged 1,113 (not counting the NCAA games, but including OSU at PPG Paints). So it does appear to be down even with the massive PSU crowd. Pitt should consider additional marketing strategies because it has a good product to sell locally.
I will relay my experience being in town and going to the UL game before Thanksgiving. There was only one ticket window open (at the top of the Pete) and a long 15-20 minute line outside in the cold to get tickets from that window (and it would have been longer if some people weren't passing out their extras for free). There were also no signs at the main entrance of the Pete about tickets and that led to some confusion by those entering from the lower campus side going through security, who then had to go back out and up to the top and outside to wait in the long line. Many in the ticket line were late to the start because of the wait time to the window. They even ran out of the ability to take credit cards because they couldn't print any more tickets. I've seen this at the Fitz too, where they have to go through the system to print out tickets, which is ridiculously slow, and they are all for GA anyway so it doesn't even make sense. Just have a stack of tickets ready for GA customers! Yes, there seemed to be other people working in the ticket office because they were milling around when the ability to take cards went down. Why wouldn't someone have jumped in and opened another window knowing about this line? This is just basic giving a crap and considering the big picture of your job and the lowest level of customer service one can experience and not the way to endear themselves to new fans. Middle schools run ticket widows better.
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All I know is me and my family are hooked. We loved going. In fact we are hooked for all of the olympic sports. Prior to 5 years ago I dont think i ever attended a pitt Olympic sport event. Since we joined the acc I've been to numerous baseball, wrestling, softball, soccer and volleyball games. My wife has taken my girls to gymnastics.
Football is my first love and I will forever attend those, but I'm all in on these olympic sports. They are just plain fun to attend.
Football is my first love and I will forever attend those, but I'm all in on these olympic sports. They are just plain fun to attend.
It would be an exaggeration to say that there were no students there for the Howard game, but only a slight one. While Saturday was better, I'll bet it still wasn't higher than 50 or so (not counting the pep band). There were a group of about 20 sitting, oddly enough, right behind the Cincinnati cheerleaders, and I'm sure there were others who didn't sit there and were scattered about the building, but the lack of student attendance was kind of shocking.
That's the sad thing about the attendance last weekend. Those were fun events to attend. Even with the loss on Saturday that was simply a great sporting event.
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