The Schnable Scoop: Pitt Fought for 10-0, and That's the Point

Ten days. Six matches. Three time zones' worth of travel, and finally, three games in Victory Heights.

By the time Pitt volleyball closed its non-conference slate with a sweep of Wright State, the record read a clean 10-0. The story behind it was anything but clean, and that's exactly why it matters.

A perfect record built on teams you know you can beat tells you nothing. A perfect record built on five wins over ranked opponents, four dropped sets and a handful of sets decided by two or three points tells you everything.

Pitt has already beaten No. 3 Kentucky, No. 15 Kansas, No. 6 Wisconsin, No. 24 BYU and No. 17 Tennessee. It has also lost sets to three of those teams, plus an unranked Utah squad that looks like a tournament team in the making. None of that shows up in the win column. All of it shows up in December.

The Panthers have shown they can get outraced to the finish line and still refuse to lose.

Against BYU, they trailed 23-22 in the first set before freshman Ayanna Watson ripped off a 3-0 run to close it out. Against Tennessee, they were down 23-21, then 26-25, before Watson and Olivia Babcock traded kills to steal the set. Against High Point, trailing 23-20 in the third, they closed on a 5-0 run.

Three different sets, three different deficits, one identical response.

"It gives us a lot of value in learning how to flip the switch in the game," Olivia Babcock said. "Especially against High Point, we were behind by a lot, and we just had to grind it out because we knew the coaches couldn't do it for us. They're not on the court, so we have to find solutions within the people on the court."

That's not a talking point. That's a team describing, in real time, the exact muscle postseason volleyball demands.

Five-set matches in December aren't won by teams that have never had to claw back from the brink. They're won by teams that already know what it feels like and have already found a way through it, six times over, before conference play even started.

What makes this Pitt team dangerous is that the grit isn't covering for a lack of talent, it's stacked on top of it.

A year ago, the Panthers needed Babcock to put up 20-plus kills most nights just to have a chance. This season, with Izzy Starck running a far more balanced attack, that pressure has been spread out.

Pitt's hitting percentage sits inside the top 20 nationally at .330. Babcock is still elite, top five nationally in both kills and points per set, but she's flanked now by Bayless averaging 3.24 kills a set and Watson right behind her at 2.73. All three middles are putting up at least 2.14 points per set.

This isn't a one-woman operation anymore.

Watson's emergence, specifically, is the piece that should scare the rest of the ACC. A true freshman averaging 3.29 kills per set over her last five matches, delivering career highs against BYU and Tennessee, in moments where the set was slipping away.

"I give it all to Izzy [Starck], [Haiti Tautua'a] and the bros," Watson said. "They just make my job so easy because they make every ball just good, and that's all I need. It feels good knowing that Izzy trusts me to step up in moments like that."

The defense has caught up too, and that's not an accident.

Pitt's block ranks inside the top 25 nationally, anchored by freshman Maaike Heilig's 1.52 blocks per set, with Emch and Dailey both hovering around 1.35.

Starck leads the team in digs at 2.55 per set and has been the difference-maker in the rallies that don't show up on a stat sheet, the ones where Pitt simply refuses to let the ball hit the floor. Her save against Xavier, the one that completely caught Babcock off guard, is the kind of play that wins points teams have no business winning.

Incredible!??

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— Pitt Volleyball (@Pitt_VB) August 24, 2026

Maybe the most alarming detail for everyone else in the country is that this version of Pitt still isn't whole. Marina Pezelj, a returning starter, has been limited, and getting her back adds a whole other layer to a team that's already this deep.

This isn't a team leaning on tenure, either, three freshmen and two transfers have walked into starting roles and looked like they belong.

"We clearly have some depth, so we can win in different ways," Fisher said. "This last stretch was not easy, and we got a lot of wins against good teams in a short amount of time. My work's cut out for me to figure out the best line-up."

That's a coach with a good problem. Pitt doesn't need to search for its identity in December, it already found it in September and every close set in between.

They're No. 2 in the country right now. The résumé says they should be No. 1. The battle scars say they're ready to earn it.