Five big questions for NCAA volleyball’s championship match

History will happen Sunday in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship match when No. 1 seeds Penn State and Louisville take the court at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.

No woman has won the NCAA title as head coach, dating back to the start of the tournament in 1981. That will change, as either Louisville’s Dani Busboom Kelly or Penn State’s Katie Schumacher-Cawley will get the championship.

For Penn State, it would be an eighth title, moving the Nittany Lions closer to Stanford’s record of nine. For Louisville and the ACC, it would be the first.

A lot of eyes will be on who is taking the court at Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center: Will Louisville fifth-year senior Anna DeBeer play? The outside hitter injured an ankle near the start of the fourth set Thursday in the 3-1 semifinal victory over Pittsburgh.

Her absence could have been devastating for the Cardinals. DeBeer is one of the most experienced players at this final four and had 14 kills, 35 receptions (with just 2 errors) and 9 digs before leaving the match.

But freshman Payton Petersen stepped in and played very well, and the Cardinals finished out the victory against the No. 1 overall seed Panthers. DeBeer leads the Cardinals in kills per set (3.37) this season. Busboom Kelly said Louisville would “do everything we can to get her on the court, but we do have a great team behind her.”

Schumacher-Cawley said Penn State will prepare as if DeBeer will play: “Being a senior and being here in Louisville, I think, if she has the ability to compete, she will.”

Louisville also competed in the 2022 NCAA final, falling to Texas. This is Penn State’s first final since winning its seventh title in 2014, and the Nittany Lions players say they believe they’re putting the program back where it belongs.

There will be a lot at stake Sunday, so here are things to watch for in the final.

Will DeBeer play?

With Louisville up two sets to one and ahead 2-0 up in the fourth against Pitt on Thursday, DeBeer slid to the middle of the court to form a block with teammate Phekran Kong. She jumped with Kong, her hands extended. She came down with Kong, but DeBeer’s right foot landed on Kong’s left heel. Her ankle twisted to its side.

Referees stopped play immediately, and DeBeer lay on the court for a minute before being helped to the sidelines, and then off the court. Without her, Louisville stepped on the gas. The Cardinals led 9-5 when she returned to the bench.

She told Busboom Kelly that she wanted to go back into the game. But when she tried to jump, it hurt.

Louisville never relinquished the lead DeBeer helped provide, and it rolled to a 22-17 victory to advance to Sunday’s title game. After the final point, DeBeer hobbled onto the court to celebrate, but she stayed out of the dogpile of Cardinals.

DeBeer attended Louisville’s practice Friday — using a mobility scooter. She did not participate.

If she can’t go Sunday, the graduate student and Louisville native will be hard to replace. There aren’t many people on the planet with her combination of talent and experience — she has 277 career kills in NCAA tournament games alone.

“It’s an ankle injury, so I think it’s kind of day-to-day,” Busboom Kelly said Friday. “The extra day [between the semifinals and final, which used to be Saturday night] gives us hope. I think if we were playing [Saturday] there would be no hope.”

How much history will be made?

Those who don’t follow volleyball might be stunned to hear that a woman has never before won the NCAA title as head coach. Part of the reason is that there are more male coaches, especially at prominent Division I programs. The most prestigious and best-paying jobs in college volleyball are on the women’s side, which has 344 Division I teams, compared with less than 30 on the men’s side.

Sam Erger, head coach at SMU, says women were bypassed for coaching positions for a long time because historically men were winning the championships, and it created a cycle.

“I don’t understand this whole, ‘We can’t find a qualified [female coach],'” she said. “I think that’s bull crap.”

Women head coaches have been making inroads, and Busboom Kelly and Schumacher-Cawley are top examples. Both won national championships as players, and Busboom Kelly also won one as an assistant coach with her alma mater, Nebraska.

“[I’m] really proud that we can be the role models and hopefully blaze a new trail and show ADs that women can do it,” Busboom Kelly said. “We can be moms, and we can be high-level coaches.

“It’s going to be awesome for the sport, I think, to get this monkey off its back and move on from this, where it’s not historic that a woman wins, it’s just a regular thing. It will be great when every final four there’s a chance for a woman to win it.”

Penn State middle blocker Taylor Trammell said, “Katie is paving the way for us. If we want to go into coaching, it shows there is a pipeline and a pathway we can follow as well, just like her, to be successful. To all the little girls out there — ‘Hey, I want to be a big D-I coach’ — they can do it.”

The other potential history is that Louisville could become the first ACC team to win the NCAA volleyball title. New ACC member Stanford’s nine titles, of course, came before it joined the league. Busboom Kelly, who took over at Louisville in 2017, also credits four-time final four participant Pitt as being a big part of elevating the ACC.

“Eight years ago, it felt like I was always fighting the battle of, ‘Well, I want to play in the Big Ten. I’ll go to this school just because they’re in the Big Ten,'” she said. “Now we don’t hear that anymore, which is great.”

How electric will it be in Louisville?

It’s similar to Nebraska playing near its Lincoln campus in past final fours in Omaha. There is just that extra level of energy when a hometown or home state team is in the final four. The Cardinals have carried that pressure all season of trying to make it to the final in their hometown, and they did it.

The excitement level was high for the final four, with a semifinal record crowd of 21,726 (not counting the four horses that stood courtside to represent each team) and two riveting matches, the second of which went five sets.

“The crowd was rocking, so just feeding off of their fire was huge,” Louisville’s Kong said.

On Thursday, fans stood outside the KFC Yum! Center holding cameras and signs (“We came all the way from Maine for this,” one read) as teams made their red-carpet entrances. A sea of red (both Louisville and Nebraska fans) swarmed the arena. When DeBeer was introduced, a thunderous roar emanated.

While some Nebraska fans — who travel especially well — have departed after the Huskers’ semifinal loss, others will stay for the final to cheer on Busboom Kelly. She is a Nebraska native who won the national championship as a Huskers player in 2006.

Can Louisville slow down Mruzik and Jurevicius?

Jess Mruzik and Caroline Jurevicius did the most damage in Thursday’s reverse sweep over Nebraska: Mruzik had 26 kills and Jurevicius 20. Louisville’s block, which was effective against Pitt, will try to keep this duo a little more in check. It won’t be easy.

Mruzik, who transferred to Penn State from Michigan ahead of last season, slams the ball so hard and at such sharp angles that some of the best teams in the nation have had trouble slowing her down. Mruzik willed the Nittany Lions past Nebraska on .300 hitting. She passed 2,000 career kills in the process.

“It was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by an outside hitter,” Nebraska coach John Cook said. “Finding ways to make kills, hitting off our block, hitting really sharp cross-court. We thought we had it, but she did a great job of hitting off our fingertips.”

Jurevicius, a transfer from Nebraska, had two of her biggest matches of the season against her former team: the Thursday semifinal and the Nittany Lions’ regular-season win Nov. 29 when she had 18 kills.

Jurevicius talked about the resolve that Penn State had to have to beat the Huskers after going down 0-2.

“In those moments, it’s a reminder to myself and my teammates that we dog it out at Penn State,” she said. “Whether it be [that] our gym in preseason is 90 degrees, or we’re walking through the snow and getting back at 3 a.m., we dog it out.”

How might things be different from these teams’ first meeting?

On Sept. 3, Penn State steamrolled Louisville, not only sweeping the Cards but losing just 47 points. Mruzik and Jurevicius combined for 24 kills. What has changed?

For the Cardinals, the gritty five-set win against Northern Iowa in the second round of the tournament shifted their energy. Kong talked about how that win solidified their connection and their growth after some “ugly losses” this season. They’re playing with more gumption.

“I know they’re a much better team than when we played them the first time in preseason,” Schumacher-Cawley said. “I think we’re a much better team than the first time in preseason. It’s going to be a battle.”

As for Penn State, the Nittany Lions look more cohesive than ever. There is a belief about them that they can come back from anything — and rallying from down 22-16 in the fourth set against a team like Nebraska in the national semifinals can only add to that confidence. The Nittany Lions will have to win the serve-pass game and control the ball on their side of the court, Schumacher-Cawley said.