Pitt hosts Stanford with tons of implications at stake

No. 1 Pitt volleyball (16-1, ACC 6-1) has one of its biggest matches of the season this weekend as perennial women’s volleyball powerhouse and new ACC foe No. 5 Stanford (14-2, ACC 6-1) comes to the Fitzgerald Field House for a top-five battle with NCAA hosting and ACC Championship implications. 

Stanford’s players to watch

Senior setter Kami Miner is the star of the Cardinal roster. Miner was a first-team All-American and the Pac-12’s setter of the year in 2023, and she is just as good in her senior season with the Cardinal. Miner has the most assists per set in the ACC, tallying 10.57, and is leading Stanford to the second most kills per set in the ACC at 14.05.

Junior outside hitter Elia Rubin is Miner’s top target. Rubin has earned 528 swings on the year for the Cardinal — 93 more than the second-most set player on the Stanford roster. Rubin is efficient with her high volume, as she’s earned 216 kills this season — including the 1,000th kill of her career in her last match against SMU — and has a .271 hitting percentage. 

The other Stanford pin hitters are sophomore opposite hitter Jordyn Harvey and redshirt first-year outside hitter Ipar Kurt. Harvey gets less volume than Kurt, but she is hitting efficiently in her sophomore campaign with 142 kills and a .272 hitting percentage. Kurt isn’t hitting as efficiently as her second-year counterpart, but she’s still earned 173 kills and holds a .244 hitting percentage.

Fifth-year libero Elena Oglivie is the anchor of the Cardinal defense and arguably the second-best player to Miner on this talented Stanford roster. In 2024, Oglivie has improved in serve receive, only making four errors. Oglivie is on track to only have eight errors in serve receive this season, which is less than half the amount of errors she committed when she was Pac-12 libero of the year in 2022 and 2023.

When Stanford is at its best

When the Cardinal is passing well and in-system during serve receive, they are borderline impossible to stop. Why? When a setter as impressive as Miner has all her hitting options, it’s impossible to predict where the ball is getting set. Topping that with the trio of Rubin, Harvey and Kurt, then two middle blockers with a hitting percentage over .340, it gets tough to defend.

For Pitt, keeping Stanford out of system is critical and one way to get by that is never serving the ball to Ogilvie. The more Oglivie passes the ball, the more Stanford is in system. Pitt must keep the ball away from Ogilvie, especially in serve receive.

What Stanford struggles with

Stanford is No. 16 out of 18 ACC teams in blocking, averaging 2.05 blocks per set. Not good, not good at all. Pitt’s biggest struggle in the ACC is good blocking teams — losing a set to Boston College who is No. 2 in the ACC and losing a match to No. 12 SMU who is No. 4 in the ACC. Stanford isn’t in that tier. 

No. 17 Georgia Tech is the 17th-best blocking team in the ACC with 1.84 blocks per set and Pitt took absolute advantage of the poor Yellow Jackets’ block, sweeping the team with ease on their home floor. Stanford isn’t as bad as Georgia Tech at blocking but it isn’t much better, and Pitt needs to expose this if it wants to stay undefeated at home in 2024.

Senior middle blocker Sami Francis is the only reason Stanford doesn’t have the worst block in the ACC. Francis averages 1.40 blocks per set — fourth best in the ACC — .71 better than the second-best blocker on the Stanford roster. When Francis isn’t on the floor, Pitt should hit above .300 as a team with ease.

Hosting implications

A No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament is at stake against Stanford. A No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament for volleyball isn’t just good for playing inferior teams in the first weekends, but hosting every game until the Final Four, which is in the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky, this season. Last season, three of the four No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four — Stanford was the odd one out.

It’s obviously not easy to earn one of the four No. 1 seeds, but Pitt did it last year, and with a win over Stanford on Sunday, the Panthers put themselves in a great position to do it again. Going by the AVCA rankings, Pitt currently holds a No. 1 seed and the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament. 

Stanford isn’t far behind Pitt. Ranked No. 5, they are the first team out of a No. 1 seed, and Sunday’s game is just as important to the Cardinal. With a win, Stanford puts itself in an inside position to earn a No. 1 seed ahead of Pitt.

The NCAA Selection Committee is releasing its top-16 rankings between the first and second sets of Sunday’s matchup between Pitt and Stanford. Fans will then have an even better grasp of where both these teams land about a month and a half before Selection Sunday.

Pitt against Stanford isn’t just a regular ACC matchup — it’s a matchup that decides home-court advantage in the NCAA Tournament and a possible ACC Champion. 

The top-five matchup will air on ESPN in front of a national audience at 3 p.m. in the Fitzgerald Field House with a sold-out crowd in Oakland.