#2 Pitt hosts #18 GT tomorrow afternoon, in what will be their biggest weekend/afternoon contest of the season. Pitt hosts Louisville for the final match of our season on Wednesday 11/24 (which happens to also be the date for the Pitt-Vandy home basketball game). Massey has Pitt as 81% favorites to win the match 3-1. UL@GT was a great match a couple weeks ago, and GT gave UL everything they had in Set 2, stretching the score to 36-34. This will be a tough match and Pitt will need to be more locked in than they were against Clemson.
I also saw someone on another site posted their first bracketology prediction of the season, and Pitt is the overall #1 seed. It pretty much looks the way you'd expect early in conference season, so I won't do a full analysis.
The interesting details, however, are which and how many ACC teams can make it, and what regional teams might end up playing here against Pitt?
I think it's going to be a challenge for the Orange to squeeze in (pun intended). They have a guaranteed loss at Louisville tomorrow. Their next weekend hosting NC State and UNC looms large for Syracuse.
ND is surging after a road sweep of Clemson and GT last weekend. The committee requires all at-large teams to finish .500 or better, so ND can be no worse than 11-7 in conference to qualify. They need to execute about 1.5 wins better than they are currently trending. Hopefully Pitt can avoid giving them a resume-building win. ND does play UL twice, so after we're done with them, let them turn into world-beaters.
UNC is still coasting from their 11-0 start, even with an 0-4 ACC record until yesterday. I think if Syracuse and/or ND end up in, it will be at the expense of UNC, and vice versa.
This is the interesting part. Unlike some other sports, the seeding for NCAA volleyball is very much a formula based on geography.
Pitt played the first weekend at PSU in 2016 and 2017 because that was the closest host to us. If PSU fails to snag a top-16 seed, they'd be very likely to play here at Pitt. This round of bracketology instead flew them out to UCLA. I feel like the pro-B1G committee is inevitably going to put them here. I am rooting for PSU to finish just well enough to end up a low-seed host. Pitt hosting PSU in a Sweet 16 match would be pretty spectacular though.
The wildcard is if WVU can finish strong enough to qualify, they will surely play here, and they would be way less dangerous than PSU. Pitt made quick work of WVU last spring (-8, -12, -15), but WVU is a lot better this season. Still, I think this is a matchup that Pitt would love, and would likely draw us a crowd. Unfortunately, WVU will be an underdog in almost every match remaining. They do have a lot of toss-ups, so it is still a possibility (>40% in 8 of 12 matches).
That post has Michigan playing in our site, which seems pretty likely. They will avoid placing them at a fellow B1G host, so it pretty much boils down to Pitt being closer than Louisville/Kentucky or fly them out west. I'm guessing that a few players on this roster would enjoy the opportunity to avenge the season-ending loss from 2018. Sophomore Kayla Lund was injured in the opening match at the Pete and held out in the second round, where #11 Pitt ended up losing in five sets to #18 Michigan.
To bring it back to the GT match, I think it is really crucial for Pitt to win these matches against GT because they're the only other team that has much of a chance of stopping Pitt. The road trip to FSU and Miami will be the only other threat. If Pitt manages to win all those games, I think even a 16-2 record and being swept by Louisville will still land us one of the top-4 regional seeds. We would drop to 4th unless Wisconsin loses some matches, but I think our resume would still be better than Purdue, Kentucky, and Baylor.
I also saw someone on another site posted their first bracketology prediction of the season, and Pitt is the overall #1 seed. It pretty much looks the way you'd expect early in conference season, so I won't do a full analysis.
The interesting details, however, are which and how many ACC teams can make it, and what regional teams might end up playing here against Pitt?
I think it's going to be a challenge for the Orange to squeeze in (pun intended). They have a guaranteed loss at Louisville tomorrow. Their next weekend hosting NC State and UNC looms large for Syracuse.
ND is surging after a road sweep of Clemson and GT last weekend. The committee requires all at-large teams to finish .500 or better, so ND can be no worse than 11-7 in conference to qualify. They need to execute about 1.5 wins better than they are currently trending. Hopefully Pitt can avoid giving them a resume-building win. ND does play UL twice, so after we're done with them, let them turn into world-beaters.
UNC is still coasting from their 11-0 start, even with an 0-4 ACC record until yesterday. I think if Syracuse and/or ND end up in, it will be at the expense of UNC, and vice versa.
This is the interesting part. Unlike some other sports, the seeding for NCAA volleyball is very much a formula based on geography.
Pitt played the first weekend at PSU in 2016 and 2017 because that was the closest host to us. If PSU fails to snag a top-16 seed, they'd be very likely to play here at Pitt. This round of bracketology instead flew them out to UCLA. I feel like the pro-B1G committee is inevitably going to put them here. I am rooting for PSU to finish just well enough to end up a low-seed host. Pitt hosting PSU in a Sweet 16 match would be pretty spectacular though.
The wildcard is if WVU can finish strong enough to qualify, they will surely play here, and they would be way less dangerous than PSU. Pitt made quick work of WVU last spring (-8, -12, -15), but WVU is a lot better this season. Still, I think this is a matchup that Pitt would love, and would likely draw us a crowd. Unfortunately, WVU will be an underdog in almost every match remaining. They do have a lot of toss-ups, so it is still a possibility (>40% in 8 of 12 matches).
That post has Michigan playing in our site, which seems pretty likely. They will avoid placing them at a fellow B1G host, so it pretty much boils down to Pitt being closer than Louisville/Kentucky or fly them out west. I'm guessing that a few players on this roster would enjoy the opportunity to avenge the season-ending loss from 2018. Sophomore Kayla Lund was injured in the opening match at the Pete and held out in the second round, where #11 Pitt ended up losing in five sets to #18 Michigan.
To bring it back to the GT match, I think it is really crucial for Pitt to win these matches against GT because they're the only other team that has much of a chance of stopping Pitt. The road trip to FSU and Miami will be the only other threat. If Pitt manages to win all those games, I think even a 16-2 record and being swept by Louisville will still land us one of the top-4 regional seeds. We would drop to 4th unless Wisconsin loses some matches, but I think our resume would still be better than Purdue, Kentucky, and Baylor.
