The Texas Longhorns women’s volleyball team is in familiar territory: back in the NCAA championship match. Meanwhile, their opponent in Saturday’s final, the Louisville Cardinals, will be there for the first time, as will the ACC as a league.
Texas, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, beat the San Diego Toreros 3-1 on Thursday, which was followed by the Cardinals’ 3-2 win over their conference rival, the Pittsburgh Panthers.
This will be the Longhorns’ eighth appearance in the NCAA title match, which ties them with UCLA for the fourth most. Only Stanford (17), Penn State (10) and Nebraska (10) have played for the NCAA championship more. Texas won NCAA titles in 2012 and 1988 and took the final AIAW championship in 1981.
The ACC had only one representative at volleyball’s final four before the back-to-back appearances by Louisville and Pitt the past two seasons. That was Florida State, which lost in the national semifinals in 2011. Both the Cardinals and Panthers lost in the semifinals last year.
Not only is this ACC breakthrough historically notable for volleyball, but so is Louisville coach Dani Busboom Kelly’s appearance in the final. She is just the second woman head coach in the NCAA championship match, following the Florida Gators’ Mary Wise in 2003 and 2017.
“Dani has just done so much for this program,” Louisville outside hitter Anna DeBeer said. “She’s a badass. She knows what she wants, she makes us work hard, we want to work hard for her.”
DeBeer and teammate Elena Scott combined for 10 aces, the most by one team in a national semifinal match in the past 10 years, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
DeBeer was at the service line for the first eight points of the fifth set, which turned into a remarkable 15-2 rout for the Cardinals after Pitt had rallied to win the fourth set.
“I knew if I could just be aggressive and get them out of system at the beginning of that set, it would help us a lot,” DeBeer said. “I really wanted to get a nice serve going, and it ended up being more than I expected.”
Claire Chaussee had 25 kills to lead Louisville, which was 31-2 this season.
The Cardinals and Longhorns did not meet in the regular season.