PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – I suppose winning 136 of your last 152 games would give you some confidence. Advancing to a first ever Final Four last year, gives you confidence. This Pitt team is oozing it opening the NCAA Tournament Friday night at home against Colgate.
“Having the focus of our vibe being the most important,” said Pitt captain Chiamaka Nwokolo. “No matter who we play, we are going to play good opponents. As long as we are good on our side, we feel like we are unstoppable.”
Only nationally ranked Louisville, San Diego and Towson beat the Panthers this year. Pitt won it’s fourth ACC championship in six seasons this year and what head coach Dan Fisher loves about his team is not being satisfied. Fisher said three weeks after the Final Four he was in his office and heard noise in the Fitzgerald Field House. There was his entire team working out on their own to prepare for a season that wouldn’t start for eight months.
“One of the things that attracted me here is the want to never, ever be complacent,” Nwokolo said. “I think Fish (Dan Fisher) does a good job when we have an accomplishment, there is always more, something else to achieve. We went to the Final Four last year and came back in Spring and were like ‘let’s go win a national championship’.”
“How can we get better? What else can we do?”
Panthers believe the last match at the Petersen Events Center helped them prepare for what they need to do this year to accomplish that goal. In front of the second-biggest crowd in Pitt volleyball history, they were on the verge of losing to 13th ranked Georgia Tech and ending their dream of the conference title.
“What better preparation for a tournament to play in that environment,” Nwokolo said. “We knew that game held a lot for us, if we won we were one game from being ACC champs.”
“Having that pressure of having to win this game and playing against a very good team and finding our way out of a 10-5 deficit in the fifth set. That only just prepares us for moments in the tournament that we are going to see. We loved that as a good learning experience before the tournament.”
If the Final Four loss wasn’t enough of driving force, the Panthers believe with the third best strength of schedule they should have received one of the four top seeds. Instead, they ended up a two-seed with a very tough draw that could include a second-round match-up with preseason Top 10 BYU.
Pitt co-captain Ashley Browske said teammate Valeria Vasquez-Gomez said in the locker room this week ‘how does this not make you motivated and if you are not, what are you doing here?’
“Now that we’ve gone to a Final Four, we know what it takes to get there,” Browske said. “We are going to do everything in our power to get back to that place and go for a national championship.”
It begins Friday at home against the Patriot League champion at 7p.