2021 NCAA volleyball tournament – Breaking down the final four

The final four is set. Louisville, Wisconsin, Pitt and Nebraska will vie for the 2021 NCAA volleyball championship.

Louisville is seeking college volleyball’s first perfect season since Penn State had two undefeated seasons (2008, 2009) in a four-year dynasty from 2007 to 2010. The 32-0 Cardinals have dropped just one set throughout the tournament thus far.

Trying to stop them is fourth-seeded Wisconsin, which ranks third in the country in assists per set, thanks to Sydney Hilley. The Big Ten champs haven’t won an NCAA title, although the Badgers were runners-up in 2019, 2013 and 2000.

On the other side of the bracket, 30-3 Pitt was recently boosted by the return of Kayla Lund. The grad student and two-time ACC Player of the Year totaled five kills in a quarterfinal win over Purdue.

The Panthers will not be playing second-seeded Texas, but rather 10th-seeded Nebraska, which upset the Longhorns in the Elite Eight on Saturday. The Cornhuskers, who won titles in 2015 and 2017, look to get back to the top thanks to junior Madi Kubik, who has double-digit kills in six of her past seven matches.

Our analysts break down what happened in regionals and look ahead to the final four, which begins Thursday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Let’s break down Texas-Nebraska. What went wrong for the Longhorns?

Mechelle Voepel: Texas played with fire in getting down 2-0 in both of its regional matches, and then got burned. The Longhorns were able to scramble out of danger against Washington, but not against Nebraska. And so we have another season of missed potential for Texas

It’s kind of hard to find a comparison in other college sports to what we’ve seen with Texas volleyball over the past decade. The Longhorns won the NCAA title in 2012, and they’ve been good enough every season since to win it again. They’ve been to three championship matches and two other final fours in that stretch, but still haven’t won the program’s third overall title.

You could say it’s similar to UConn’s…