Five Big Questions Heading into NCAA Volleyball’s Championship Game

History will happen Sunday in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship game when No. 1 seed Penn State and Louisville take the court at 15 ET on ABC.

No woman has won the NCAA head coaching title dating back to the tournament’s inception in 1981. That will change when either Louisville’s Dani Busboom Kelly or Penn State’s Katie Schumacher-Cawley claim the championship.

For Penn State, it would be an eighth title, moving the Nittany Lions closer to Stanford’s record of nine. For Louisville and the ACC, that would be a first.

Many eyes will be on who takes the field at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center: Will Louisville fifth-year senior Anna DeBeer play? The outside hitter injured an ankle near the start of the fourth set Thursday in the 3-1 semifinal win over Pittsburgh.

Her absence could have been devastating for the Cardinals. DeBeer is one of the most experienced players at this Final Four and had 14 kills, 35 receptions (with only 2 errors) and 9 digs before leaving the game.

But freshman Payton Petersen stepped in and played very well, and the Cardinals finished with the win against the No. 1 overall seed Panthers. DeBeer leads the Cardinals in kills per set (3.37) this season. Busboom Kelly said Louisville would “do everything we can to get her on the field, but we have a great team behind her.”

Schumacher-Cawley said Penn State will prepare as if DeBeer will play: “Being a senior and being here at Louisville, I think if she has the ability to compete, she will.”

Louisville also made the 2022 NCAA finals, falling to Texas. This is Penn State’s first final since winning its seventh title in 2014, and the Nittany Lions players say they believe they are putting the program back where it belongs.

There will be a lot at stake on Sunday, so here are things to watch out for in the final.

Will DeBeer play?

With Louisville up two sets to one and ahead 2-0 in the fourth against Pitt on Thursday, DeBeer slid to the middle of the court to form a block with teammate Phekran Kong. She jumped with Kong, her hands outstretched. She came down with Kong, but DeBeer’s right foot landed on Kong’s left heel. Her ankle twisted to the side.

The refs stopped play immediately and DeBeer lay on the field for a minute before being helped to the sideline and then off the field. Without her, Louisville stepped on the gas. The Cardinals led 9-5 when she returned to the bench.

She told Busboom Kelly that she wanted back in the game. But when she tried to jump, it hurt.

Louisville never relinquished the lead DeBeer helped provide and rolled to a 22-17 victory to advance to Sunday’s title game. After the final point, DeBeer hobbled onto the court to celebrate, but she stayed out of the pile of Cardinals.

DeBeer attended Louisville’s practice Friday — using a mobility scooter. She did not participate.

If she can’t go Sunday, the graduate student and Louisville native will be hard to replace. There aren’t many people on the planet with her combination of talent and experience – she has 277 career kills in NCAA tournament play alone.

“It’s an ankle injury, so I think it’s kind of day-to-day,” Busboom Kelly said Friday. “The extra day (between the semifinals and the final, which used to be Saturday night) gives us hope. I think if we played (Saturday), there would be no hope.”

How much history is being written?

Those who don’t follow volleyball may be shocked to learn that a woman has never before won the NCAA head coaching title. Part of the reason is that there are more male coaches, especially at prominent Division I programs. The most prestigious and highest-paying jobs in college volleyball are on the women’s side, which has 344 Division I teams, compared to less than 30 on the men’s side.

Sam Erger, head coach at SMU, says women were passed over for coaching positions for a long time because men historically won the championships, and that created a cycle.

“I don’t understand the whole, ‘We can’t find a qualified (female coach)’,” she said. “I think it’s bullshit.”

Female head coaches have made inroads, with Busboom Kelly and Schumacher-Cawley being prime examples. Both won national championships as players, and Busboom Kelly also won one as an assistant coach with his alma mater, Nebraska.

“(I’m) really proud that we can be the role models and hopefully break new ground and show ADs that women can do it,” Busboom Kelly said. “We can be mothers and we can be high-level coaches.

“It’s going to be great for the sport, I think, to get that monkey off our back and move on from this where it’s not historic for a woman to win, it’s just a regular thing. It’s going to be great when every last four is a chance for a woman to win it.”

Penn State middle blocker Taylor Trammell said, “Katie is paving the way for us. If we’re going to go into coaching, it shows that there’s a pipeline and a path we can follow, like her, to be successful. To all those little girls out there — ‘Hey, I want to be a big DI coach’ — they can do it.”

The other potential story is that Louisville could become the first ACC team to win the NCAA volleyball title. New ACC member Stanford’s nine titles, of course, came before it joined the league. Busboom Kelly, who took over at Louisville in 2017, also credits four-time Final Four participant Pitt with being a big part of elevating the ACC.

“Eight years ago, it felt like I was always fighting the battle of, ‘Well, I want to play in the Big Ten. I’m going to this school just because they’re in the Big Ten,'” she said. “Now we don’t hear it anymore, which is great.”

How electric will it be in Louisville?

It looks like Nebraska played near its Lincoln campus in previous finals in Omaha. There’s just that extra level of energy when a hometown or home state team is in the final four. The Cardinals have carried that pressure all season trying to get to the finals in their hometown and they did.

Excitement levels were high for the last four, with a semi-final record crowd of 21,726 (not including the four horses standing at track to represent each team) and two thrilling matches, the second of which went to five sets.

“The crowd was rocking, so feeding off their fire was huge,” Louisville’s Kong said.

On Thursday, fans lined up outside the KFC Yum! Center with cameras and signs (“We came all the way from Maine for this,” one read) as teams made their red carpet entrances. A sea of ​​red (both Louisville and Nebraska fans) swarmed the arena. When DeBeer was introduced, there was a thunderous roar.

While some Nebraska fans — who travel especially well — have left after the Huskers’ semifinal loss, others will stay in the final to cheer on Busboom Kelly. She is a Nebraska native who won the national championship as a Huskers player in 2006.

Can Louisville slow down Mruzik and Jurevicius?

Jess Mruzik and Caroline Jurevicius did the most damage in Thursday’s reverse sweep of Nebraska: Mruzik had 26 kills and Jurevicius 20. Louisville’s blocking, which was effective against Pitt, will try to keep that duo in check a little more. It won’t be easy.

Mruzik, who transferred to Penn State from Michigan prior to last season, hits the ball so hard and at such sharp angles that some of the top teams in the nation have had trouble slowing her down. Mruzik willed the Nittany Lions past Nebraska at .300 hitting. She passed 2,000 career kills in the process.

“That was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by an outside hitter,” Nebraska coach John Cook said. “Finding ways to make kills, hit off our block, hit really sharp across the court. We thought we had it, but she did a great job of knocking off our fingertips.”

Jurevicius, a transfer from Nebraska, had two of her biggest games of the season against her former team: Thursday’s semifinal and the Nittany Lions’ regular-season win on Nov. 29, in which she had 18 kills.

Jurevicius talked about the decision Penn State had to beat the Huskers after being down 0-2.

“In those moments, it’s a reminder to myself and my teammates that we’re exposing it at Penn State,” she said. “Whether it’s (that) our practice facility in the preseason is 90 degrees or we’re walking through the snow and coming back at 3 a.m., we’ll do it.”

How can things be different from these teams’ first meeting?

On Sept. 3, Penn State steamrolled Louisville, not only sweeping the maps, but dropping just 47 points. Mruzik and Jurevicius combined for 24 kills. What has changed?

For the Cardinals, the tough five-set win against Northern Iowa in the second round of the tournament changed their energy. Kong talked about how that win strengthened their bond and their growth after some “ugly losses” this season. They play with more courage.

“I know they’re a much better team than when we played them the first time in the preseason,” Schumacher-Cawley said. “I think we’re a much better team than the first time in the preseason. It’s going to be a game.”

As for Penn State, the Nittany Lions look more cohesive than ever. There’s a belief in them that they can come back from anything — and rallying from down 22-16 in the fourth set against a team like Nebraska in the national semifinals can only add to that confidence. The Nittany Lions will have to win the serve-pass game and control the ball on their side of the court, Schumacher-Cawley said.