Bumpy Start For PITT Volleyball This Season
In Head Coach Dan Fisher’s 5th season at the helm at PITT, he believes that “this is the strongest group” we’ve had in his tenure at the University. And that is a large amount of praise to give this team heading into the season after last year’s team made a minor impact in the NCAA Tournament before being knocked out by Penn State last season.
They have most of last season’s team back and have added 2 Top 100 recruits and a transfer to the team. Fisher mentioned in his preseason press conference is that, “Our pre-conference schedule is really, really tough. We’re going to have a lot of opportunities to beat Top 50 teams in the first 4 weekends.”
They opened the season at the Husky Invitational with two 3-0 losses to #3 Washington and #9 Creighton before rebounding to earn their first victory with a 3 set to 2 set victory over St. Mary’s.
After what was a tough first weekend, Head Coach Dan Fisher said in the weekly “Fish Report” on PITT LiveWire, “We made a few too many errors to compete with Top 10 teams right now.”
This year’s team came into the season with the main core still together after last season’s tournament appearance and it will be a great thing for this team to find out what they need to work on early in the year, so they are firing on all cylinders when they begin ACC conference play.
Just like in any college sport, if you are going to lose “big” games, lose them early because there is still plenty of time to fix the mistakes and errors that lead to those losses.
For the second weekend of action, the team headed to the Dayton Invitational and it was a little more of the same as they went 1-1 in the two games. They lost to Iowa State in a 5-set thriller 3-2 before sweeping Dayton 3-0 to close out the weekend.
In the Week 2 “Fish Report” on PITT LiveWire Coach Fisher said, “We’ve been working on some things and we’re still figuring out what our best lineup is. We saw a lot of different players in different positions and it was good to get a big win.”
The team is on the road once again this weekend as they are taking part in the WKU Holiday Inn – University Plaza Invitational. They will play Saint Louis (This Afternoon), WKU (Tonight) and East Tennessee State Tomorrow.
The Panthers will host their first home matches next weekend at the Fitzgerald Field House as part of the Panther Invitational.
They currently sit at 2-3 on the season right now, but as I said it’s early and if they can fix the problems that have plagued them in the 3 losses, this team will be a force in the ACC. This conference is one of the best for Women’s Volleyball and the fact that PITT is already near the top of the standings will only help them attract top talent and will soon be mentioned among the top teams across the nation.
I predicted an NCAA Tournament berth this season for this year’s team and I am sticking by that until proven otherwise. I like the makeup of this team, they are still young, but still with a lot of experience after last season’s appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Question of the Day: How many PITT Olympic sporting events do you attend each season? Which one is your favoirte to attend? What will make you attend more often: Winning, Atmosphere, Etc? Tweet your responses to @MattyIcePGH and @IntoPITT.
