Nine aces fuel Pitt to Sweet 16 sweep
Last year’s unseeded Pitt Panthers shocked No. 3 Minnesota 3-2 in an emotional Sweet 16 upset. Kansas looked to turn the tables on the three-seed Panthers on Thursday, but Pitt never let the Jayhawks sniff victory in a 3-0 sweep.
“There’s always added confidence with getting a higher seed, but also I think we try to play with an underdog mentality and a chip on our shoulder,” Pitt captain Chinaza Ndee said after the win.
The match didn’t start until about an hour after its scheduled time, as BYU and Purdue’s battle beforehand took five long sets to complete. It would take a few extra minutes for Pitt to show up though, getting off to an awful start in the first set.
The Jayhawks won four of the match’s first five points, with their first two kills coming from star freshman Caroline Bien. The lead extended to 8-3, forcing Pitt head coach to force a timeout and deliver a blunt message to his players.
“[I told them] mostly just to start hitting the ball in bounds,” Fisher said with a laugh. “We were a little too juiced.”
The team listened. The Panthers won the next three points to claw within two, but the Jayhawks responded with two kills to go up four. When Kansas committed a serving error on the next point, Pitt turned to fifth-year senior Kayla Lund to handle service duties.
The two-time ACC Player of the Year delivered. Pitt won the next nine points on Lund’s serve, taking a 17-11 lead off of the 10-0 run. Ndee racked up four kills in that stretch, finishing with a match-high of 14 on an efficient .632 clip.
“We capitalized on our balance,” Ndee said. “At any moment, any one of us can go off. At any moment, any one of us can get a kill. That helps us out, because we know ‘If I’m not getting it done than my teammates can.”
That early edge had vanished, and Kansas wouldn’t provide much resistance for the rest of the afternoon. Ndee put away her seventh kill of the opening set to win it for Pitt 25-19.
Pitt senior Leketor Member-Meneh, a transfer from Missouri, continued to dominate on the attack against Kansas, but struggled heavily in other areas. The All-ACC First Team honoree made several errors when fielding serves, leading the Jayhawks to target her for much of the second set.
Fisher had harped on the importance of serve-receive yesterday, and felt the Panthers could have done better on Thursday.
“Not our best serve-receive game, but we hung in there and I do think we won the serve-pass battle,” he said. “Good, not great.”
Despite the sloppy play there, the Panthers maintained at least a two-point cushion for most of the second game. Penn state transfer Serena Gray, fresh off of eliminating her previous school in the round prior, converted on all five of her swings in the set, helping Pitt take a 2-0 lead in the match.
With Pitt one set away from its second consecutive elite eight appearance, the crowd of 1,644 increased the noise. Member-Meneh and Ndee both praised the fans who showed up for a crucial match on a mid-week afternoon.
“I think it’s always good playing at home, you can feel the love,” Member-Meneh said. “Even when we’re down, our crowd lifts us up, so I think it’s really good that we’re back here on Saturday and I hope it’s gonna be a bigger crowd and they’ll continue to feed us energy.”
Pitt, who averages 1.43 services per set this year, stumped the Jayhawks with four of them in the third set, a game the Panthers never trailed. Member-Meneh provided the first one to give Pitt a 17-11 lead, Gray’s made it 20-12, and Lund added one to put the Panthers ahead 23-17.
After the two teams exchanged kills, Pitt redshirt sophomore Valeria Vazquez Gomez’s serve dribbled over the net for the Panthers’ ninth ace of the match — securing the 3-0 victory.
Pitt will now face Purdue in the Elite 8 on Saturday, after the Boilermakers fended off five match points in its thrilling win over BYU. Panther fans may have preferred a meeting with the Cougars, who Pitt beat 3-1 in the regular season, but Fisher reiterated his team’s confidence with a Final Four appearance at stake.
“We don’t know if we will advance,” Fisher concluded. “But we know we can.”