No. 2 Pitt Looks To Remain Unbeaten On Road With North Carolina Swing

PITTSBURGH - No. 2 Pitt, now 19-1 overall and 9-1 in ACC play, makes a North Carolina swing this weekend to face Wake Forest Friday at 6:30 p.m. and NC State Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Both matches will be streamed on ACC Network Extra.

Wake Forest is 9-12 on the season and 3-7 in ACC play. The Demon Deacons have been difficult to beat at home recently, going 5-2 over their past seven home matches. Both losses were five set defeats to upper half ACC teams in Duke and ranked North Carolina.

NC State enters the weekend with a record of 13-8 overall and 4-6 in league play. The Wolfpack are 9-1 at home on the season and allows opponents to hit just .184 this year.

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 111-13. Babcock and Bayless have lost just two home matches in four seasons at Pitt.

WE'RE #1

The NCAA releases the official RPI rankings each Monday. For the third straight week, Pitt is No. 1 in the country.
Just behind Pitt is Nebraska, Florida, Wisconsin and Louisville. SMU, Oregon, Kentucky, BYU and Penn State round out the top 10.

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 .852 win percentage ranks just ahead of Nebraska's Dani Busboom Kelly (.851).
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 in the top 25 in the country in assists per set and she has earned ACC Setter of the Week honors three times this year.
The 2024 AVCA Freshman of the Year and a national champion at Penn State, Starck has averaged 10.75 assists per set during her career, which ranks fourth among active players. She is averaging 10.45 assists per set in her first year with the Panthers.
Starck is guiding an offense that is second in the nation with a .332 attack percentage. Pitt has hit at least .300 in 14-of-20 matches this year and has hit at least .400 four times. Pitt has hit .367 or better in five consecutive matches.

ON THE ATTACK

Pitt currently ranks second in the country with a .332 attack percentage. Nebraska is also hitting .332 but the Cornhuskers' .3323 is four-thousandths of a percent ahead of the Panthers' .3319.
The Panthers are simply getting more efficient as the year wears on. Pitt has hit at least .367 in five consecutive matches, including .475 in the most recent contest at Clemson. During that five-match stretch that began following the team's lone loss of the year, Pitt is hitting .390.
In total, Pitt has hit at least .300 in 14-of-20 matches and at least .400 four times this year, peaking at .476 against Wright State.
Even more impressively, Pitt is hitting .381 inside Victory Heights this season and has reached at least .300 in all seven contests inside the facility.

DAILEY'S DOUBLE

Jordyn Dailey entered the past weekend as Pitt's most terminal middle blocker, hitting over .500 on the season. But she took a big step forward defensively in the two matches over the weekend against Georgia Tech and Clemson.
Dailey entered in the third set against Georgia Tech and posted five blocks for the Panthers. She followed that up with seven blocks, including two solo, over three sets at Clemson. She averaged 3.0 blocks per set on the weekend and her 12 blocks combined equaled the most she's had in a two-match stretch this season.

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+ three times in the last nine matches, including a career-best 14 against Stanford.
Thompson is averaging 2.61 digs per set over the past nine 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 172 each. Pitt is 172-21 (.891) over that span, while Nebraska is 172-20 (.896). The Panthers are also a remarkable 94-10 (.904) in conference play during that span.
Louisville is third in the country during that stretch with 166 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.

STILL GETTING BETTER?

How does the best player in college volleyball get better? Well, for Olivia Babcock, the increase in efficiency has been jaw-dropping.
Babcock leads the country in points per set and ranks second in kills per set despite being just 58th in the country in attacks per set.
She is hitting .372 this year, a steep improvement from .334 a year ago, .323 as a sophomore and .306 as a freshman. Babcock is hitting .470 over the past five matches.
Very few players in the country are attacking as efficiently as Babcock with as much volume as she has. Among the 125 most efficient hitters in the country, Babcock has the most attacks.
The only player in the country who has attacked more than Babcock who also ranks in the top 150 in the country in efficiency is Penn State's Kennedy Martin and she is hitting .331 (compared to Babcock's .372).
Despite being the focal point of every defense Pitt faces, Babcock's .372 attack percentage ranks sixth among pin hitters.

STREAKING FROM THE START

Pitt began the 2026 season by winning 14 consecutive matches, tying for the fourth-longest win streak to open a season in program history.
Following a loss to SMU, Pitt has reeled off five straight victories to improve to 19-1. Only the 2018 team had a better record through 20 matches in the program's history.
The team's .950 win percentage this year would break the program's single-season win percentage record, which was set in 2024 when the team went 33-2 (.942).

TWO DOWN

Olivia Babcock has already done something only four players in AVCA history have done: win National Player of the Year honors twice. Now she's chasing something nobody has done before.
Olivia Babcock enters her senior campaign as the reigning two-time AVCA National Player of the Year.
She is now the fifth player in the award's history to receive the award back-to-back and the first since Kathryn Plummer (2017 & 2018).
Others who have won the award twice are Logan Tom (2001 & 2002), Misty May (1997 & 1998), Tara Cross (1988 & 1989) and Tonya Sanders-Williams (1987 & 1989). No individual has ever won the award three times in their career.

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 3.23 kills per set, 1.62 digs per set, 0.62 blocks per set and 3.55 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 20 matches down, the numbers are making their case.
Pitt has outdug 17-of-20 opponents in 2026 and is averaging 4.0 per match more than their opponents. Over the last five matches, Pitt is outdigging its opponents by 8.6 per set.
Up front, Pitt ranks No. 2 nationally, and first among schools from Power Four conferences, in blocks at 3.18 per set, which is on pace to break the program's single-season record. Maaike Heilig is No. 8 in the country at 1.53 blocks per set and Abbey Emch is No. 9 at 1.49. 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 used a team effort to rank No. 2 in the country in blocks per set.
Six players have at least 40 blocks this year, led by Heilig with 78. Emch adds 73 blocks and Olivia Babcock has 69.
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.

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Players Mentioned

Olivia Babcock

Blaire Bayless

Jordyn Dailey

Abbey Emch

Maaike Heilig

Izzy Starck

Trinity Thompson

University of Pittsburgh Athletics