Volleyball
- Thread starter gary2
- Start date
Deeper for sure .
More elite athleticism with Leketor and Grey. Better service team IMO. Maybe a little weaker passing because they play a 6-2 to keep more hitters on the floor.
By the end of last season we were clearly a legit National championship contender - hard to say this team is necessarily better— but I do think they’re height and athleticism looks more like a truly elite team. They’re just really good.
I think Pitt developed a lot over the course of the 20-21 season, but they were not a contender. They weren't even seeded in the tournament. I think last season, Pitt had just the right mix of veteran experience and reserves trying to step up and fill the voids left from those departing 2019 seniors. It took a while, but VVG, Browske, and others really turned that team around and gave Fisher the chance to get them to new heights this year.
I think the difficulty in evaluating various teams in 2020 or 2021 is that the schedules are a bit weird and people are dragging along a lot of historical assumptions to help make sense of the chaos. This season of the ACC is arguably the best the conference has ever seen. In that way, it is possible for Pitt to "struggle" more and end up with a worse record than in the past, despite being a better, stronger team.
It is actually playing out a lot like the 2009 Big East basketball season where Pitt, UConn, and Louisville were all elite teams that earned #1 seeds.
As far as the quality of play, I think Pitt's issues this year are the same as they've always been. Pitt is a very good offensive team, and their biggest fault tends to be expecting to just power through the other team's defense. If they are trailing, they tend to just keep running their stuff even if it isn't working. Most of the time they wear the other team out and still win, but it is risky against someone like GT who was playing great defense against us. Fisher has held pretty hard to his ideal 6-2 rotation. I personally would have liked to see some of the others like VVG, Nwokolo, Starks, etc. playing more often earlier in the season. Obviously Fish knows a lot more about VB than I do, but it has seemed like we've kept a lot of fresh, talented players on the bench. There were at least a couple occasions I recall where Starks only entered in the third set but came in and just dominated.
This past weekend was probably the weakest pairing of opponents for us in the ACC, so it was nice to see Fisher trying a lot of different things.
We returned a lot of talent and added some transfers who are impact players. I think we’re a little bit better.
