The Louisville Cardinals advanced to the NCAA women’s volleyball final four in their hometown next week, beating the nine-time national champion Stanford Cardinal 3-1 in Saturday’s regional final.
Louisville will play ACC rival Pittsburgh in the national semifinals at KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville on Thursday on ESPN. Pitt, the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament, beat No. 3 seed Kentucky 3-0 on Saturday in another regional final.
The last two final four spots will be decided Sunday, as No. 1 Nebraska hosts No. 2 Wisconsin at 3 p.m. ET on ABC, and No. 1 Penn State hosts No. 2 Creighton at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Neither Louisville nor Pitt has won a national championship in women’s volleyball, but both have been knocking on the door the past few years. This will be the third season in a row they meet in the NCAA tournament. Louisville won their national semifinal match in 2022, and Pitt won their regional final meeting last year.
This season, Pitt won both of their regular-season meetings with Louisville in ACC play, as the Panthers claimed the league title at 19-1, with Louisville and Stanford tied for second at 17-3.
This is Pitt’s fourth consecutive final four; the Panthers have lost in the semifinals the previous three years. It is Louisville’s third final four trip; the Cardinals lost in the 2021 semifinals to eventual champion Wisconsin and in the 2022 final to Texas.
Louisville is the first team to play in the volleyball final four in its home state since Nebraska in 2015; the Huskers won their fourth national championship that year in Omaha.
“The pressure to get here with the final four in Louisville … this has been a dream,” Cardinals coach Dani Busboom Kelly said Saturday at Louisville’s Freedom Hall. “We did not prep well for [Stanford] the last time we played them. I thought we did it much better this time, and we learned.”
Louisville’s previous match against Stanford, in its first season in the ACC, was the last of the regular season. Stanford won 3-1 on Nov. 30. That was the day before the NCAA bracket was unveiled, with the Cardinals and Cardinal battling for the final No. 1 seed. Louisville, which had beaten Stanford in their first matchup Sept. 29, got the nod from the selection committee, and Stanford got a No. 2 seed.
That was important, as the top four seeds that make it to the sweet 16 get to host the regionals. That helped Louisville, which hasn’t had to leave town to make the final four.
On Saturday, Louisville lost the first set 25-22 and won the second 25-14. The turning point was when Louisville fended off two set points in the third set, and eventually won 28-26. Louisville then closed out the match 25-20 in the fourth set. Anna DeBeer, a fifth-year senior and Louisville native, led the Cardinals with 15 kills.
