No. 2 Pitt Returns Home To Host Florida State, Miami

Friday, October 16

Pittsburgh, Pa.

7 PM

Pitt

Florida State

Tickets From $35 - $40

No. 2 Pitt Returns Home To Host Florida State, Miami

10/15/2026 10:41:00 AM | Volleyball

Weekend Match Notes Watch Friday vs. FSU Live Stats vs. FSU Watch Sunday vs. Miami Live Stats vs. Miami

PITTSBURGH - No. 2 Pitt hosts a pair of ACC opponents this weekend, welcoming Florida State inside Victory Heights Friday night at 7 p.m. before hosting Miami Saturday at noon. Pitt, Miami and Florida State are three of the four teams (along with SMU) that sit just one loss out of first place in the ACC behind unbeaten Louisville and North Carolina.

Despite splitting two matches with SMU last week, Pitt remained No. 2 in the AVCA Top 25 poll. The Panthers are No. 1 in the country in RPI, a key metric towards NCAA Tournament seeding.

Pitt senior right side Olivia Babcock leads the country in both kills per set and points per set. The two-time defending AVCA National Player of the Year is having arguably the best year of her career.

WHAT FANS NEED TO KNOW FOR THE WEEKEND

Friday will be an Oktoberfest Rewind with pierogies available for all fans and a discount beer cart.
Olivia Babcock will be recognized just prior to the National Anthem for breaking the school records in career kills and career aces.
Sunday is Sunny Sunday with a sunglasses giveaway and a meta glasses sweepstakes for students. Oktoberfest pierogies will be available and the team's ring presentation for their 2025 season will take place pregame.
Also on Sunday, POSTGAME AUTOGRAPHS!

BRING 'EM BACK

On Sept. 26, Olivia Babcock and Blaire Bayless announced that they will return to Pitt for a fifth season in 2027, due to new NCAA rules enacted over the summer.
Babcock and Bayless made the announcement during a timeout at Pitt football's Homecoming victory over Bucknell in Acrisure Stadium.
The duo has led Pitt to three straight trips to the Final Four with an overall record of 108-13. Babcock and Bayless have lost just two home matches in four seasons at Pitt.

WE'RE #1

The NCAA released the first official RPI rankings on Oct. 4 and updates it every week following. Pitt was ranked No. 1 in the country to begin the year and remained in the top spot since.
Just behind Pitt is Nebraska, Kentucky, SMU and Florida. Wisconsin, Louisville, Vanderbilt, Washington and Oregon round out the top 10.

WELCOME TO THE HEIGHTS

The Panthers unofficially opened Victory Heights on Aug. 8 for its annual Blue-Gold scrimmage
In front of 2,341 fans, Team Gold pulled off a reverse sweep. Team Blue won the opening two sets 25-23 and 30-28 before Gold rallied with 25-18, 25-20, 15-7 scores for the win.
The $240 million state-of-the-art athletics project provides Pitt student-athletes with national-caliber competition, training, sports performance and medicine facilities.
Announced in 2020, Victory Heights includes a new 2,800-seat arena for the volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling programs. The volleyball team also has its own in-house practice facility.

THE HEIGHT OF VICTORY

Pitt officially opened Victory Heights Sept. 11-13 for the Panther Challenge. The Panthers swept Jacksonville, High Point and Wright State.
Following wins over Cal and No. 12 Stanford, Pitt is now 5-0 inside Victory Heights and has not lost a set in the building.
Having previously played most of its home matches inside Fitzgerald Field House (as well as select matches inside Petersen Events Center), Pitt entered the 2026 season with the longest win streaks in the country.
SMU snapped Pitt's 58-match home win streak on Oct. 7, a run that had dated back to Sept. 14, 2023. That streak ties 1990-94 Florida for the seventh-longest in NCAA Division I history.

THE STREAKS DON'T END THOUGH

SMU may have snapped a few of Pitt's streaks with that four-set defeat on Oct. 7, but the Panthers still have plenty more.
The Panthers advanced to their fifth consecutive national semifinal with a four-set win over Purdue in 2025. They are one of just four programs in history to accomplish that feat and first since Texas (2012-16).
Pitt has won outright or shared the ACC championship for four straight years. In 2022, Pitt shared the title with Louisville with identical 17-1 records. In 2023, the Panthers went 16-2 to tie Florida State atop the ACC standings and won the league outright in 2024 with a 19-1 mark. Last year, Pitt and Stanford tied atop the league standings at 18-2.
Pitt now has a seven-match road winning streak, which is tied for the fourth-longest in the country. Only Nebraska (18), Western Kentucky (16) and Coppin State (9) have longer road winning streaks.

FISHING FOR WINS

Pitt Head Coach Dan Fisher has spent more than a decade reeling in wins. He is the winningest active coach, by winning percentage, in NCAA Division I with a minimum of five years experience. His .851 win percentage ranks just ahead of Nebraska's Dani Busboom Kelly (.848).
Fisher, in fact, is fourth among all coaches in NCAA Division I history (minimum five years) in winning percentage.

NO STARCK CONTRAST

There's nothing stark about the consistency Izzy Starck has brought to Pitt's lineup. The junior setter ranks No. 11 in the country in assists per set and she has recorded six double-doubles thus far in 2026.
The 2024 AVCA Freshman of the Year and a national champion at Penn State, Starck has averaged 10.84 assists per set during her career, which ranks second among active players across the entirety of the NCAA. She is averaging 10.73 assists per set in her first year with the Panthers.
Starck is guiding an offense that is second in the nation with a .320 attack percentage. Pitt has hit at least .300 in 10-of-16 matches this year and has hit at least .400 three times.

DIG THIS PROGRESS

Freshman Trinity Thompson entered Pitt as a highly touted setter, breaking the state of Nevada's all-time assist record. So a transition to libero was expected to take some time. But Thompson's growth has come quickly.
Through the first 11 matches of the season, Thompson recorded double-digit digs just one time, but she's hit 11+ in three of the last five matches, including a career-best 14 against Stanford.
Thompson is averaging 3.06 digs per set over the past five matches after averaging just 1.64 over the first 11 contests.

HARD TO BEAT

Since the start of the 2021 season, nobody in NCAA Division I women's volleyball has won more than Pitt.
Pitt and Nebraska enter the weekend atop the NCAA volleyball world for wins since 2021 with 168 each. Pitt is 168-21 (.889) over that span, while Nebraska is 168-20 (.894). The Panthers are also a remarkable 90-10 (.900) in conference play during that span.
Louisville is third in the country during that stretch with 162 wins, a full six victories behind Pitt and Nebraska.
In non-conference play, Pitt has gone undefeated three times in the last six years, doing so in 2021 (11-0) and 2024 (10-0) prior to another unbeaten (10-0) non-conference slate this year.

ON THE ATTACK

Pitt ranks second in the country with a .320 attack percentage. Only Nebraska (.330) has hit at a more efficient rate than the Panthers.
The Panthers had hit at least .300 for six straight matches prior to failing to reach that percentage in a sweep at Boston College.
In total, Pitt has hit at least .300 in 10-of-16 matches and at least .400 three times this year, peaking at .476 against Wright State.
Even more impressively, Pitt is hitting .380 inside Victory Heights this season and has reached at least .300 in all five contests inside the facility.

THE BAYLESS BUILD

Blaire Bayless didn't arrive at Pitt fully built. She built herself here.
Bayless has become the exception in this era of college athletics -- a player who has stayed at the same program for four years and made steady, continual growth throughout her career.
As a freshman in 2023, Bayless played in just seven sets at Pitt with 13 kills. A year later, she saw much more action, playing in 33 matches and 89 sets.
As a junior in 2025, Bayless truly blossomed. She played in 34 matches and 120 sets, increasing her production in almost every area, averaging a career-best 2.65 kills per set on .296 hitting with career-highs in digs (115/0.96 per set), blocks (58/0.48 per set) and points (349/2.91 per set).
But Bayless didn't stop there. In 2026, she is averaging 3.17 kills per set, 1.68 digs per set, 0.62 blocks per set and 3.50 points per set -- each of which are on pace to be career highs. She has become one of the most important pieces to finding balance offensively while also contributing defensively.
Bayless was named to the National Player of the Year Watch List on Oct. 8, becoming the third Pitt player on the list -- along with Olivia Babcock and Izzy Starck.

D-FENCE

Head Coach Dan Fisher said this could be the best defensive team he's coached. With 16 matches down, the numbers are making their case.
Pitt has outdug 13-of-17 opponents in 2026 and is averaging 2.8 per match more than their opponents.
Up front, Pitt ranks No. 4 nationally, and first in the ACC, in blocks at 2.99 per set. Abbey Emch is No. 13 in the country at 1.49 blocks per set and Maaike Heilig is No. 21 at 1.43. Heilig, in fact, is second among all freshmen in the country.

BLOCK PARTY

While Abbey Emch and Maaike Heilig have block totals that rank among the best in the country, Pitt truly has seen it take a team effort to rank No. 4 in the country in blocks per set.
Six players have at least 33 blocks this year, led by Heilig with 63. Emch adds 58 blocks and Olivia Babcock has 53.
Emch had nine blocks in sweeps over Cal and SMU and has at least four blocks in nine of the 13 matches she has played in.
Since the team's run to five straight Final Fours, Pitt has never had more than four players with at least 60 blocks but the Panthers are on pace to have six players reach that milestone this year.

THEY'VE GOT THEIR EYES ON US

Senior Olivia Babcock and junior transfer Izzy Starck were two of 30 players named to the AVCA Preseason Player of the Year Watch List.
Babcock is the two-time defending AVCA Player of the Year and Starck was named AVCA Freshman of the Year in 2024.
Blaire Bayless was added to the list on Oct. 8, giving Pitt three of the 46 current nominees for the award.