Aside from the obvious – bragging rights from coast to coast, a grand feeling of achievement and a chance to play for a national championship— Pitt women’s volleyball’s second consecutive Final Four appearance comes with one more important benefit: The opportunity to reach one of the most elusive goals in sports, college or pro — sustainability.
“The main thing is for recruiting,” coach Dan Fisher said when asked what Pitt’s return trip means to his program.
Fisher is aware that the top high school players sometimes need coaxing. What better way than to show them a video of Pitt’s Elite Eight victory Saturday against Wisconsin in front of a decidedly hostile crowd in Madison, Wis.?
“You still get the, ‘Well, I feel like I need to play in the whatever conference if I want to win a championship or be on the national team,’ ” Fisher said Monday. “I think this shows that you can do it at Pitt or you can do it at Louisville or you can do it at a Big 12 team.”
Pitt (31-3) and Louisville (30-1) are half of the Final Four and will meet in the second game of an NCAA Tournament semifinal doubleheader Thursday at CHI Health Center Arena in Omaha, Neb. San Diego (31-1) meets Texas (26-1) in the first game. Both games are on ESPN.
Winners will meet Saturday, and that game will be on ESPN2.
ACC rivals Pitt and Louisville will confront each other for the fifth time in the past two seasons. Louisville won three of the first four by scores of 3-0 on Nov. 18 and 3-2 and 3-1 last season. The Panthers won, 3-2, on Oct. 23 before a crowd of 2,686 at Fitzgerald Field House.
“I think we have a friendly rivalry (with Louisville). Especially since (coach) Dani (Busboom Kelly) has been there,” Fisher said. “But over the last four years, I think we really have made each other better.
“There’s been years we had their number and years they had ours. I just think we’ve been looking at each other as that’s the team we’ve got to be better than. And it turns out, that standard is still a pretty good one.”
The games get tougher as the tournament progresses, but the Omaha crowd may lean closer to neutral than the fans in Madison, who created a monumental din Saturday.
“I’m pretty sure I have some hearing loss from that game,” Fisher said.
“It was a wonderful college sporting environment. We were pushed to our limits emotionally and found a way to win.
“We felt like we had one of the toughest roads to get to the final four of any of the brackets (playing on the Badgers’ floor). But, we thought, ‘Hey, if we can beat BYU in the second round (at home) and then beat Florida and Wisconsin at Wisconsin, we felt like we’d be going into the Final Four with a lot of confidence.
“And I think we are.”
Courtney Buzzerio, who transferred to Pitt after playing four seasons at Iowa, is pleased she made such a career-defining decision.
“It’s more than I could ever have imagined ever coming here,” she said. “Coming in knowing they made the Final Four last year, that was a goal. Now it’s to make it even further and win a national championship. Being able to continue to play this weekend is really exciting.”
Buzzerio had her share of disappointments in Madison while playing for Iowa. She knows an opposing team winning there is no small feat.
“Just winning there would be a big thing,” she said, “but with the stakes so high, it was even sweeter.”
