CHARLOTTE, N.C. (theACC.com) – Coming off its third straight Final Four appearance a season ago, Pitt was named the preseason favorite to win the 2024 Atlantic Coast Conference Volleyball Championship following a vote of the league’s head coaches. The Panthers received 13 first-place votes and 285 total points, 17 points ahead of conference newcomer Stanford (268), which earned three first-place votes and 20 points ahead of Louisville (265), which garnered two first-place votes.
Pitt, which returns 10 players from last year’s national semifinal run, closed last season with a 16-2 conference mark and earned one of the four No. 1 seeds in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. The Panthers are the only team in the nation to make each of the last three Final Fours.
Stanford begins its first season in the ACC after posting 29 victories and finishing at No. 5 in the final AVCA Poll a year ago. Louisville, which met Pitt in the regional final a season ago, finished 2023 with 27 victories, headlined by a 16-1 mark at home.
Georgia Tech (230 points) and Florida State (226) round out the top five in this year’s preseason poll, as the Yellow Jackets claimed fourth and the Seminoles were fifth. Georgia Tech has made four straight appearances in the NCAA Tournament and returns six of its eight players from last season’s main rotation. FSU, which was picked fourth a season ago, claimed a share of last year’s conference title for the first time since 2012.
ACC newcomer SMU (199) finished sixth, Miami (197) earned seventh, NC State (187) finished eighth, Duke (140) was projected ninth and North Carolina (135) rounded out the top 10.
The 2024 Preseason Volleyball All-ACC Team consisted of 18 players and was voted on by the league’s head coaches. Louisville and Stanford led the way with the most players on this year’s preseason team, as both teams had four representatives. All four of last season’s ACC yearly award winners landed on the preseason team, as ACC Co-Players of the Year Anna DeBeer of Louisville and Audrey Koenig of Florida State joined Louisville’s Elena Scott and Pitt’s tandem of Rachel Fairbanks and Olivia Babcock.
In the last three seasons, the ACC is the only conference to send at least one team and five teams overall to the Final Four. The 2024 season gets underway on Friday, August 30.
2024 Preseason ACC Volleyball…
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