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Michael Voepel, ESPN.com
All four NCAA women’s volleyball finals will feature all four No. 1 seeds, as Nebraska and Penn State won their regional finals on Sunday, joining Pitt and Louisville, who advanced on Saturday.
The national semifinals are Thursday in Louisville, with the hometown Cardinals taking on the Panthers at 6:30 p.m. ET, followed by the Huskers taking on the Nittany Lions. Both games are on ESPN. The national championship game will take place on Sunday, December 22 at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.
Both semifinals will face conference opponents. ACC rivals Louisville and Pitt are each seeking their first national volleyball championships. It’s much different on the other side of the bracket: Big Ten rivals Penn State (seven) and Nebraska (five) have 12 NCAA titles and nine second-place finishes between them.
During the regular season, No. 1 overall seed Pitt beat Louisville in their two matchups, and Penn State beat Nebraska in their meeting.
The Huskers, now in their 18th NCAA Final Four, advanced easily Sunday, sweeping Wisconsin 26-24, 25-17, 25-21. Taylor Landfair, a senior playing her first season at Nebraska after transferring from Minnesota, led the Huskers with 11 kills. Nebraska also swept the Badgers in both Big Ten regular-season meetings this year.
Penn State is playing in its 14th NCAA Final Four, but had a tougher life Sunday. The Nittany Lions were pushed to five sets by No. 2 seed Creighton, which was trying to advance to its first Final Four and host an all-school Nebraska semifinal. But the Nittany Lions, with the advantage of playing the regional on their home court like the other No. 1 seeds, won the fifth set 15-7. Jess Mruzik led Penn State with 20 kills.
No female head coach has ever won the NCAA Division I volleyball championship, first played in 1981. But there’s a chance it could happen this year, as two women – Dani Busboom Kelly of Louisville and Katie Schumacher-Cawley of Penn State – are in the final four.
The only coach in the final four to have already won a title is Nebraska’s John Cook, who owns four of the Huskers’ titles. All of Penn State’s championships came under Russ Rose, who retired after the 2021 season.