Make that four losses in four straight national semifinals for the Panthers’ women’s college volleyball team.

However, the defeat at the hands of ACC rival Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center in Downtown Louisville on Thursday night had to be the most crushing of them all. Pitt was the number-one team in the country for most of the regular season and entered the tournament as the number-one overall seed. The Panthers only lost one match the entire regular season (to SMU) and defeated Louisville at home and on the road.

It really looked like it would be Pitt’s night early on, as the team grabbed the first set, 25-21.

Pitt got out to a 10-5 lead in the second set and ultimately held a 23-22 lead before the Cardinals won the final three points to take the set and tie the match at one.

The biggest letdown of the match occurred in the third set when the Panthers led, 23-19, only to ultimately blow that lead and lose by a score of 29-27.

The match seemed all but lost at that point, and the Cardinals confirmed that by dominating the fourth set, eventually winning by a score of 25-17 to take the match three sets to one.

The Cardinals, who, like Pitt, advanced to the Final Four as the top seed in their bracket, will take on Penn State in the national championship game at the KFC Yum! Center at 3 p.m. on Sunday. The Nittany Lions advanced to the final match after pulling off the reverse sweep of powerhouse Nebraska, who lost in the championship round a year ago.

Back to the Panthers; they will no doubt spend the offseason asking what could have been. They may also wonder if maybe their championship window has finally closed. The program hadn’t experienced much tournament success through the mid-2010s, but that all began to change under head coach Dan Fisher in 2016. That season, Fisher, who was hired in 2013, guided Pitt to its first tournament appearance since 2004.

Tournament appearances became an annual thing over the next several seasons, and the Panthers made it to their first regional final in program history in 2020. A season later, came the first-ever trip to the Final Four.

Obviously, making it to the Final Four four years in a row is an incredible accomplishment, but to not even advance to the title game once is very disappointing.

Will the Panthers women’s volleyball team ever get over the hump? I guess we’ll find out one year from now.