UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State has shown flashes of brilliance early on this season, most notably in two ranked wins over West Coast powers UCLA and USC a couple of weekends ago.
Last weekend, however, showed that Penn State is still searching for consistency early in the season after being swept by both Ball State and Ohio State.
"The games so far have all been this culmination of experiences where we see flashes of us being a great team and then moments where we know we have to improve on stuff," right side hitter Calvin Mende said. "It's nice to have that at the beginning of the season so far and give us a chance to really work on those before we take it to conference play and then take it past that."
After Penn State beat both UCLA and USC, it looked like Mark Pavlik's team might be a legitimate national contender for the first time in several seasons. Even after two frustrating losses this past weekend, Penn State still might be closer to contending than the box scores from last weekend showed.
Despite being swept in both matches over the weekend, Pavlik pointed out that the Nittany Lions scored at least 22 points in four of the six sets they've played. In the 28 total sets they've played this season, they've scored at least 22 points in 19 of them, while playing a very difficult non-conference schedule.
"The experiences you gain early are the ones you have more time to spend reflecting on, making better, making sure that you can repeat those if they're good wins," Pavlik said. "The fact that we've been in some pretty tightly-contested games…you find what you can fall back on."
Like all teams early in a season, Pavlik is still experimenting with which lineups work best and trying to determine how to use the strengths of his players on the court.
In the first three weekends of the season, Pavlik thought the Nittany Lions' passing was very good, but this past weekend it was far less consistent.
One early positive Pavlik can count on though is his team is much healthier now than it was this time last year, which has given him plenty of options to work with.
A fully healthy Mende, in particular, has been an excellent weapon so far in his fifth and final season for Penn State. Last year, Mende played only 18 matches due to a nagging shoulder injury. Pavlik has said several times already though that the 6-foot-11 lefty is producing at a higher level than they have ever seen from him.
"His arm is much faster," Pavlik said. "Obviously going into his fifth year, he's seen that move before many times. There's not a whole lot that should surprise him. Defensively, he's made strides where we were just talking about a play where he touches a ball that I don't know he gets last year or two years before. The evolution of his growth is one that you kind of expect from a guy who's been on the court as much as he has."
Mende has also added another dimension to his serving game this year. He has been going with the top-spin jump serve in every match to start this season, which was not the case in years past.
He had begun using the top-spin a bit more last year early in the season, but he reverted back to a jump-float once his shoulder started bothering him.
Now that he is free of shoulder pain, he's added some extra physicality to his jump serve and is third on the team with 10 aces.
"This year I've been able to jump serve each game and it's feeling good so far," Mende said. "A lot of it can stem from practice when we're getting reps from serve and pass drills. We have some pretty good passers in our gym so trying to challenge them and trying to beat them is great practice for a game."
As Penn State prepares for a road trip in Columbus this weekend against Long Beach State, the defending national champion, and UC Santa Barbara, Pavlik says Penn State's serving must be aggressive in order to take some pressure off his team's blockers.
"Historically we've had some pretty good matches against Long Beach throughout my career," Pavlik said. "I foresee another one coming up on Friday."
With every passing weekend of non-conference play, it will become more important for Penn State to figure out its identity. A challenging road trip will also be telling in how Penn State responds to an unsuccessful weekend.
"We're trying to forge ahead on our own and make our own identity regardless of what happened last year," Mende said. "This week of practice will probably be one of the more focused we've been in a while, which can be a good thing, but also we can't get overly critical of ourselves in some of these moments where it feels like we're too frustrated."
