NCAA CHAMPS: Penn State women's volleyball tops Louisville, 3-1, winning title
The Penn State women’s volleyball team delivered an NCAA national championship with a 3 sets to 1 win over Louisville on Sunday afternoon. It is the program’s eighth national championship, putting the Nittany Lions second all-time in the sport behind only Stanford, with nine.
With the win, head coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley became the first woman to ever win an NCAA national championship in the sport. Diagnosed with stage two breast cancer before the season, Schumacher-Cawley won a title in just her third season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach.
In line with the many steps necessary to reach the tournament final with the Cardinals, doing so was arduous for the Nittany Lions.
Returning to the Yum! Center in downtown Louisville following a dramatic 3-2, reverse-sweep win over Nebraska in the semifinal on Thursday, Penn State battled with Cardinals out of the gates. Locked in a back and forth tilt in front of a record 21,860 fans on hand for the championship, the Nittany Lions found their first sizable advantage in the middle of the first set, taking a 14-10 lead with three consecutive points.
Hanging on to a tenuous advantage the rest of the set, the Nittany Lions found themselves tied four more times but finished off a 23-23 deadlock with a Maggie Mendelson kill and Jess Mruzik serving ace to go ahead 1-0.
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The first set’s drama was but a precursor of what was to come. Jumping out to a considerable lead on Louisville, who appeared absent star Anna DeBeer, who suffered an ankle injury in the Cardinals’ semifinal win over Pitt. Unable to return to action, Penn State took advantage, building and sustaining a lead from the very start of the second set.
Mruzik, who finished the match with 29 kills and 14 digs and took home the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in the process, was instrumental in building a lead that ballooned to 17-10 midway through the set. Cut into by the Cardinals, a Caroline Jurevicious block propelled Penn State to a 24-19 set point opportunity.
It wouldn’t work out.
Surrendering four-straight points, the Nittany Lions found themselves unable to shake the Cardinals. Instead of a comfortable 2-0 set advantage before the break, a Charitie Luper kill and combination block finished out the set in favor of the host program, 34-32.
Returning to action motivated to put the setback in the past, the Nittany Lions produced a resurgent performance. Confidently earning a 25-20 third-set win in which the Cardinals never led, Penn State used the momentum it’d built for itself by breaking away for its largest lead of any set in the fourth-and-final frame of the match. This time going ahead 10-2, the Nittany Lions weren’t threatened the rest of the way.
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