Gritty Louisville back in NCAA volleyball national-title match with 4-set win over Pitt

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — No DeBeer?

No problem.

Not when you have Payton Peterson.

There is nothing like Louisville and Pittsburgh in NCAA volleyball and the Cardinals wrote another chapter in their incredible recent history with a 21-25, 25-23, 29-27, 25-17 victory Thursday night in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship national semifinals that saw an unsung freshman star emerge.

The Cardinals now have a chance to do what no team has ever done, win every round at home when they play in Sunday’s national-title match.

Pittsburgh, rather, made its own history by losing in four consecutive national semifinals.

Anna DeBeer, the Louisville native, the leader whose gritty play has defined the program during her five-year career, went down with a right-leg injury with her team up 2-1 in the third set.

And that’s when Peterson, a 5-10 freshman whose mother, Bobbi, is the coach at Northern Iowa, put herself into the lore of the game.

She not only had back-to-back aces that gave Louisville a 9-3 lead, but had four digs and two kills with no errors in four errorless attacks. And the last one put the punctuation point on the match when Charitie Luper made an off-balance set and Peterson overpowered the Pitt block for the match-ending point.  

It sent the pro-Louisville home crowd in the KFC Yum! Center into a frenzy as their Cardinals will play either Penn State or Nebraska in Sunday’s title match.

Louisville improved to 30-5 as it reached the national-championship match for the second time in three years, Louisville lost to Texas in the 2022 title match and last year lost in the regional final to — who else? but Pitt, when the Panthers pulled off a reverse sweep. 

Luper led Louisville with 14 kills, an ace, nine digs and a block. 

Sofia Maldonado Diaz, who combined for 14 kills and 11 errors in Louisville’s two ACC regular-season losses to Pitt this season, also had 14 kills — seven in the fourth set — hit .355 and had an assist an ace, four digs and a block.

DeBeer, too, had 14 kills, an assist, nine digs and three blocks. Cara Cresse had nine kills — four in the fourth set — hit .438 and had six blocks. PK Kong had seven kills in nine errorless attacks and four blocks. Reese Robins had five kills and two digs. Setter Nayelis Cabello had 44 assists, two aces, eight digs and three blocks. Her team hit…