LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville native Anna DeBeer recorded 14 kills before leaving with a right ankle injury, Payton Peterson recorded consecutive aces in her place and top-seeded Louisville beat No. 1 overall seed Pittsburgh 3-1 on Thursday night to reach its second NCAA volleyball championship in three years.

What You Need To Know

  • Louisville volleyball advances to the NCAA National Championship 

  • UofL beat Pitt 3-1

  • Outside hitter Anna DeBeer left the game early in the fourth set, her status for Sunday's championshp game is uncertain

  • Louisville and Penn State will play for the NCAA title Sunday, Dec. 22. 

The host Cardinals (30-5) stopped a four-match losing streak against the Panthers, including two this season, and will face Penn State in Sunday’s championship. The Nittany Lions rallied from an 0-2 deficit to beat Nebraska in five sets. The match will feature two women’s coaches for the first time with Louisville’s Dani Busboom Kelly and Penn State’s Katie Schumacher-Cawley.

“Incredible match tonight. Pitt’s an exceptional team, and they have players that you can do everything right and they still can take over the game,” said Busboom Kelly. “I was just so proud of the way our team played and battled and stuck with what we’d worked on this entire week. Just the amount of trust we showed, not only in the team, but in ourselves, was pretty incredible.”

All-American outside hitter/right setter Olivia Babcock had 33 kills for the Panthers (33-2), whose 18-match winning streak was snapped. They entered as the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed and played in their fourth consecutive national semifinal, but couldn’t follow their strong opening set in which they hit .373 with nine kills from Babcock.

“We beat them in transition by an enormous margin, but they were absolutely unstoppable on the first ball,” Pitt coach Dan Fisher said. “We just couldn’t get enough of those. And then you guys all saw what happened in the second, third set, and it was hard for us to swallow.”

Louisville overcame a 25-21 opening-set loss to beat Pitt 25-23, 29-27 and 25-17, taking control after DeBeer went down early in the fourth set, with what UofL called a right ankle injury.

The graduate All-American hitter was helped off the court and into the locker room before returning to the sideline and cheering on her teammates.

A couple of freshmen stood our for Louisville in the match. Setter and ACC Freshman of the Year Nayelis Cabello recorded 44 assists, eight digs, and two aces. Outside hitter Payton Petersen came in for DeBeer and posted two kills, four digs, and two aces.

“At first I thought when she went down, I thought ‘She’s going to be fine, she’s going to get back up,’” said Peterson, who had 4.5 points. “And when it hit me that she was not gonna come back, I wanted to do this for her. For that to be her last game, I didn’t want that to happen.”

Busboom-Kelly said afterward she wasn’t sure about DeBeer’s availability for the championship game.

“It just felt like everybody was so dialed in, we could have put anybody in and had the same outcome,” said Busboom Kelly. “Super proud and a really unbelievable performance against maybe the best team in the country.”

ACC Defensive Player of the Year Elena Scott had 14 digs of the Cards’ 54. Middle blockers Cara Cresse and Phekran Kong both added at least four blocks and seven kills, with Cresse having six blocks and nine kills and Kong with four blocks and adding seven kills.

Sofia Maldonado Diaz and Charitie Luper each recorded 14 kills each for the Cardinals, who hit .320 in the match and .425 on kills. UofL never trailed in the final set, but found another gear after DeBeer left the floor with Louisville up 2-0.

Louisville advances to the National Championship match on Dec. 22 at 3 p.m. ET at the KFC Yum! Center and will play Penn State who beat Nebraska. UofL hopes to win its first NCAA title in program history. The game will air on ABC.

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