Schumacher-Cawley’s squad was the least experienced when it came to playing in a Final Four. The Nittany Lions hadn’t been to a Final Four since 2017 and only Nebraska transfers Maggie Mendelson and Caroline Jurevicius have recent experience at this stage.
Yet, Penn State was dominant from the jump, only really struggling in the second set. It didn’t help the Cardinals that leading offensive player Anna DeBeer was unable to play in the match. She went out against Pitt in the national semifinal on Thursday with an ankle injury. It put a lot of pressure on the Cardinals’ other hitters, mainly Charitie Luper and Sofia Maldonado Diaz.
“I thought our team was really impressive,” Louisville coach Dani Busboom-Kelly said. “It’s emotional when you have a player like Anna out, who you know that — everybody in this building knows that that outcome, it might not be different, but it would have been a different match. It was an incredible performance by Charitie and Sofia. We have Nay running a five-one this week for the first time as a freshman, she really stepped up. We had a lot of players step up. It was really impressive to see.”
Despite a close start to the first set, a 3-0 run allowed the Nittany Lions to take a four point lead about halfway through the set. Louisville’s Luper wasn’t going to go quietly and scored two-straight points to tie the set at 19-19. Penn State held on and was able to finish out the set with a service ace from Jess Mruzik.
Penn State squandered quite the lead in the second set. The Nittany Lions led 24-19, but Louisville scored the next five
points to tie the match. The Cardinals survived 10 set points from Penn State to win the second set in extra points.
Outside hitter Luper put the team on her back, scoring nine kills in the set, five of which came late in the set.
“We were really frustrated,
