The fourth-set scoreboard looked ugly.
When Michigan volleyball coach Erin Virtue called an early timeout, her team faced a seven-point deficit. The Wolverines couldn’t claw their way back, and eventually lost the set by a grim margin of 17.
In the regular season, that timeout would have been a tough conversation. But in Saturday’s exhibition match with No. 4 Pittsburgh, Virtue saw it as a much-needed reckoning for a team with plenty of challenges left to face.
“What I told them was, ‘What a cool opportunity we had to see who we were going to be in that moment,’ ” Virtue said. “Obviously we weren’t able to come back from that deficit, but it’s a space that I didn’t see us completely shut down emotionally and mentally. Pitt played great at the end of that set, and we didn’t. We didn’t execute the way we needed to. But it wasn’t by lack of effort.”
Michigan may have dropped the decision 3-1, but even in a one-sided final period, it never truly appeared out of depth. Even forcing a fourth set was a marked improvement over last season, when the Panthers knocked the Wolverines out of the NCAA Tournament in straight sets. Last year’s Pitt team ranked second in the nation in kills, and its 2026 squad arguably boasts even more firepower.
On paper, the duo of opposite hitter Olivia Babcock and setter Izzy Starck gives the Panthers perhaps the most potent offense in the nation. And after losing program stalwarts like middle blocker Serena Nyambio and libero Maddi Cuchran, Michigan’s defense seems far from impenetrable.
Babcock lived up to her billing Saturday, churning out a nearly identical statline to last season’s match with 23 kills and seven errors on 43 attempts. But this time around, the Wolverines found ways to prevent her from taking over the game.
“You think that all of a sudden she’s gonna hit zero, you’re gonna set yourself up for failure,” Virtue said. “So it’s a matter of, can we try to slow her down in some situations? Or put them in some tough situations where they’re not in system with her.”
For a large part of the match, the strategy paid off. Michigan forced more errors than it committed in each of the first three sets. In the third, it held Babcock to an unproductive 6-for-20 stretch, buoying the Wolverines to their only set victory of the day. The back-to-back Player of the Year still ended with a dominant statline, but Michigan’s shrewd team defense kept it in the game until the bitter end.
Headlining that dogfight was freshman libero Meredith Martin, who recorded a match-leading 17 digs in her first collegiate game. Martin wasn’t perfect in coverage, but some of the Wolverines’ best moments came from converting her successful dives into smooth offensive sequences.
“This was a really tough call,” Virtue said about the decision to start Martin. “I thought she did a really nice job today. … Of course, like anyone, there’s going to be things that she’s going to want to work on, and we all need to. But you know, that’s not an easy thing to make a call (on) when you have a deep team like we do in any position.”
Sophomore outside hitter Ella Demetrician also didn’t shy away from a difficult matchup. She constantly challenged Babcock at the net and tied for the team lead with three blocks. Two of those came on an island against the All-American, helping Michigan’s 25-22 third-set win.
When the fourth-set reckoning came around, the conversations in the huddle were less about the current scoreboard and more about applying the defensive bright spots to similar situations in the future. The Wolverines could have treated the first match of the season like a warmup, but they kicked things off against a top-four opponent for a reason.
“I’m glad that we did it,” Virtue said about scheduling Pitt. “I wouldn’t have changed the opponent, to get that experience from a really top-level team today.”
So if Michigan’s 3-1 loss looked like a trial by fire at times, it’s because it was supposed to. Virtue’s squad has yet to play a real match, but they’ve already learned how to handle the heat.
