{"id":6099,"date":"2026-08-20T01:49:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T01:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/08\/20\/michigan-tested-by-no-4-pitt-in-3-1-exhibition-loss\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T01:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T01:49:09","slug":"michigan-tested-by-no-4-pitt-in-3-1-exhibition-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/08\/20\/michigan-tested-by-no-4-pitt-in-3-1-exhibition-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan tested by No. 4 Pitt in 3-1 exhibition loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fourth-set scoreboard looked ugly. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Michigan volleyball coach Erin Virtue called an early timeout, her team faced a seven-point deficit. The Wolverines couldn\u2019t claw their way back, and eventually lost the set by a grim margin of 17.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the regular season, that timeout would have been a tough conversation. But in Saturday\u2019s exhibition match with No. 4 Pittsburgh, Virtue saw it as a much-needed reckoning for a team with plenty of challenges left to face.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat I told them was, \u2018What a cool opportunity we had to see who we were going to be in that moment,\u2019 \u201d Virtue said. \u201cObviously we weren\u2019t able to come back from that deficit, but it\u2019s a space that I didn\u2019t see us completely shut down emotionally and mentally. Pitt played great at the end of that set, and we didn\u2019t. We didn\u2019t execute the way we needed to. But it wasn\u2019t by lack of effort.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/sports\/volleyball\/in-a-tale-of-two-hitters-michigan-dismantled-by-top-seeded-no-4-pitt-in-ncaa-tournament-3-0\/\">knocked<\/a> the Wolverines out of the NCAA Tournament in straight sets. Last year\u2019s Pitt team ranked second in the nation in kills, and its 2026 squad arguably boasts even more firepower.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s defense seems far from impenetrable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Babcock lived up to her billing Saturday, churning out a nearly identical statline to last season\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou think that all of a sudden she\u2019s gonna hit zero, you\u2019re gonna set yourself up for failure,\u201d Virtue said. \u201cSo it\u2019s a matter of, can we try to slow her down in some situations? Or put them in some tough situations where they\u2019re not in system with her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s shrewd team defense kept it in the game until the bitter end.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Headlining that dogfight was freshman libero Meredith Martin, who recorded a match-leading 17 digs in her first collegiate game. Martin wasn\u2019t perfect in coverage, but some of the Wolverines\u2019 best moments came from converting her successful dives into smooth offensive sequences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis was a really tough call,\u201d Virtue said about the decision to start Martin. \u201cI thought she did a really nice job today. \u2026 Of course, like anyone, there\u2019s going to be things that she\u2019s going to want to work on, and we all need to. But you know, that\u2019s not an easy thing to make a call (on) when you have a deep team like we do in any position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sophomore outside hitter Ella Demetrician also didn\u2019t 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\u2019s 25-22 third-set win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m glad that we did it,\u201d Virtue said about scheduling Pitt. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have changed the opponent, to get that experience from a really top-level team today.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if Michigan\u2019s 3-1 loss looked like a trial by fire at times, it\u2019s because it was supposed to. Virtue\u2019s squad has yet to play a real match, but they\u2019ve already learned how to handle the heat.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019s exhibition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[578,595,222,4570,5313],"class_list":["post-6099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-exhibition","tag-loss","tag-michigan","tag-pitt","tag-tested"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6101,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099\/revisions\/6101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}