March 22, 2018
By Will Desautelle, GoPSUsports.com student staff writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Penn State dives into its bye week after playing perhaps the busiest part of its schedule this season. The Nittany Lions are fresh off of a seven-match stretch in a span of 17 days, featuring outings against many opponents ranked within the AVCA DI-II Top 15.
Head coach Mark Pavlik is looking forward to a week of, noting his team is beginning to peak at the right time.
"Against teams that are ranked above us, we play well enough to potentially end the match before it gets to five sets," Pavlik said. "We're not good in stretches of two or three points where we absolutely have to have one point, and I think if we turn that corner we can be pretty dangerous."
The aforementioned seven-match streak for the Nittany Lions included a four-match series against BYU, Hawaii, Lewis and Ohio State, all of which are ranked in the top 10 nationally. Despite finishing 0-4 in these matches, Pavlik took many positives from the string of matches.
"It's what you do to win a national championship," Pavlik said. "You're going to have to play on a Friday, you're going to have to play on a Tuesday, a Thursday and a Saturday to win a national championship. So, you'll have four matches in eight days against good teams, so it gives you that sense of what it's going to be like in a month and a half."
Over the past several matches, redshirt sophomore middle blocker, Jason Donorovich, has been entered in the starting lineup in place of redshirt senior Jalen Penrose.
Pavlik has been impressed with the energy and consistency Donorovich has brought to the court since being inserted into a starting role.
"With [Donorovich], you know what you're going to get out of him," Pavlik said. "He works really hard in transition, he works really hard with blocking and he's fairly good at independent hands where you'll see some blockers have to move both hands to do something - he can have his be independent of each other."
For Donorovich, it's all about doing what the team needs.
"I'm really trying to work on blocking because if you have a solid block it makes the job for the defenders behind you a lot easier," Donorovich said.
Penn State's two middles in Penrose and Donorovich play with contrasting styles, but both have been very effective at times this year for Penn State.
"You know Jalen is going to go in and put balls away consistently because there's not many people in the country who can stop him," Donorovich said. "I think what I bring is more defense and energy. Whatever we need, I think that's how coach decides who will play when. I think we have two really good options."
The area where Donorovich has separated himself lately, however, has been in consistency, which Pavlik says has made things easier for the team offensively.
"He is finding ways to put the ball to the floor and block balls," Pavlik said. "It's all about trying to score points and if we can get six guys on the court that we know are going to score four points each and not give up any - there's 24 points right there. I think we can then find a way to score one more."
With the week off, Penn State will have extra time to recover from its physically demanding schedule over the past couple of weeks. The following weekend, the Nittany Lions will be on the road against Sacred Heart and Harvard looking to close the gap in the EIVA standings behind George Mason.