Penn State women's volleyball falls to Texas in NCAA Regional semifinal

No. 13 Penn State women’s volleyball’s season has come to an end as it fell in four sets to No. 4 Texas in the Regional Semifinals of the NCAA Tournament in Omaha, Neb., on Sunday night.

Playing in their 40th straight NCAA tournament — the only program in history to do so — the Nittany Lions made it to the final 16 teams after sweeping North Carolina A&T in three consecutive sets in the second round. But faced against a tough Longhorns team, Penn State lost the final three sets 25-18, 30-28 and 25-17 after taking the first set 25-23.

The Nittany Lions finished the game with 53 total kills and hit .217 on average through the four sets. Junior Jonni Parker — named to the All-Big Ten second team earlier in the week — produced 20 of those kills. Logan Eggleston was the main star for Texas, as she accumulated a season-high 22 kills to propel the Longhorns to the next round of the tournament, while Skylar Fields had 21 total kills.

In his 42nd season, longtime Penn State coach Russ Rose is well aware of the two Longhorns’ staples and credits them for stepping up big in their defeat over his team.

“Certainly Logan and Skylar were two individuals that we recruited, so I’m way more familiar with those two individuals. They had 43 kills and our outside hitters had 17 kills,” Rose said. “What Texas depends on is the ability to be physical and those individuals are very physical and they did a great job at those positions. Texas is a big-block and I think it’s a little apparent we had a problem with beating the block.”

Although the Nittany Lions came in as the underdog, they put up a good fight for a majority of the match. But it came down to missed moments, and that was the difference in building momentum from the first set to the end.

“I thought it was a really competitive match, I thought we were down a little at the start of the second game, had a number of opportunities to win in the third game and Texas kept finding ways to fend off some game-points and found a way to win,” Rose said. “In the fourth game, like the second game, we started off a little flat. And, as we knew going into the match, they were just more physical than us. Their ability to score at the outside hitting position is the primary factor but I thought we played hard.”

The first set saw back-and-forth action essentially the whole way through, and Penn State tied the set 22-22 after a successful challenge from Rose that was originally called an out-of-bounds hit on the Nittany Lions that was overturned. It took a 24-23 lead, then won the set after junior Serena Gray blocked a Texas spike.

As a team, Penn State extended a ton of rallies to create extra opportunities and Parker was the star of the set as she compiled nine kills and hit .571. To that point, the Nittany Lions had won 18 straight sets.

But No. 4 Texas never wavered, and came out strong to start the second set taking an early 12-5 point lead. That quickly turned into a 19-12 lead after both teams went back-and-forth scoring seven points each. Penn State hit its fourth ace of the match to bring the score within four, but the Longhorns closed the set on a 6-3 run to win the second set 25-18. It ended as Parker had an attacking error.

The start to the third set reminisced the first set, as both teams alternated points and they found themselves at a 9-9 tie. They found themselves deadlocked yet again at 13-13 after back-and-forth action from both sides, but as the set went on, the Nittany Lions commanded a 20-18 lead on their eighth total ace of the match from freshman Maddy Bilinovic. Serena Gray blasted a spike to put them up 23-21, then another spike to go up 24-23.

Penn State and Texas kept exchanging points, until finally the Longhorns won the third set 30-28 after the Nittany Lions hit their own net. There were 21 ties in the set and the largest lead by either team was two.

Despite being down two sets to one Kaitlyn Hord was a crucial factor for Penn State and had 11 kills with four blocked attempts heading into the fourth. Even with her brilliant performance, the First Team All-Big Ten player knew how tough a test the Longhorns would be and compared their style to a conference foe she never got to face this season due to covid-19 complications.

“Texas is definitely a lot different than the teams we’ve faced thus far in our Big Ten season,” Hord said. “I think if we would have gotten the chance to play Wisconsin, it would have been a little bit similar their middles. … It was definitely a challenge but I enjoy something different from what I’m used to.”

The Longhorns kept building on their momentum heading into the final set, and started forceful with a 5-1 lead. Their advantage turned into 13-7 as Eggleston and Brionne Butler were key factors for Texas, specifically Butler, who kept compiling spike after spike without an answer from Penn State.

Texas wound up winning the fourth set 25-17 and took the game, three sets to one. It moves on to the third round of the tournament, where it faces No. 5 Nebraska on Monday for the chance to play in the NCAA semifinals.

Penn State’s season ends with an overall record of 10-6 and 9-5 in the Big Ten. Sunday’s loss ended the Nittany Lions’ six-match winning streak. For Rose, it was a bit disappointing losing in the Regional Semifinals this year, considering his team made it one game further in the tournament last season when it lost to Stanford three sets to none.

“I think the biggest thing that I have as a takeaway is we have to do a better job at recruiting, we need to get people that can terminate, and that’s the gap that was way more noticeable this year than last year,” Rose said. “Last year we were getting better efforts from some other people and we had Tori (Gorrell), who was able to take big swings for us. It was a real learning experience playing without Kendall (White) this year.”