Last week, No. 8 Penn State men’s volleyball swept No. 15 Ball State to lengthen its winning streak to three games, including two wins coming against top-ranked Ohio State. The Nittany Lions looked impressive until they hit a wall against Purdue Fort Wayne the following night.

Penn State dropped a five-set match to the Mastodons in a thriller, but the team that was nearly unstoppable against Ball State suddenly looked anything but. It could’ve been due to John Kerr’s early exit in Fort Wayne or 23 service errors, but head coach Mark Pavlik said it was because of his team’s decision-making and predictability.

“We can’t load up [Michael] Valenzi and [Michal] Kowal with 84 sets in a five-game match and only set the right side 10 to 13 times,” Pavlik said. “If I’m defending that type of offense, we’ll give you 13 points.” 

As for the service errors, that’s the least of Pavlik’s concerns.

“I do not care about service errors,” he said bluntly. “I think bringing attention to the service errors by saying we need to make more of our serves is like telling a pitcher, ‘You need to throw more strikes.’”

Pavlik does want his servers to challenge opponents more, though, which was missing against Purdue Fort Wayne.

“On games two and three, I don’t think we challenged them. I think we kind of served to put the ball in [play],” Pavlik said. “When you don’t put service pressure on the team in the men’s game, that’s what you get.” 

The lack of offensive balance still generated great numbers for the Nittany Lions as they hit .433 against Ball State and .343 against Purdue Fort Wayne and tallied 118 combined kills. Penn State even had more kills, assists, aces, and overall points scored in the loss to the Mastodons, but there’s still room for improvement.

“Hats off to the job that [Kowal] and [Valenzi] did, but more importantly, we’re walking away from Fort Wayne with a five-game loss,” Pavlik said. “We’ve got to give them help, and we’ve got to use them a little bit more judiciously in situations and use Toby [Ezeonu] and Owen [Rose] and our right sides to loosen up the defense.”

Against Purdue Fort Wayne, Kowal had a season-high 25 kills on 47 attacks while hitting .383, and Valenzi came one short of tying his season-high in kills with 13 on 37 attacks. In contrast, Ezeonu had nine kills on only 15 attacks, and Rose had 11 kills on 18 attacks.

Penn State is 7-3 and still has its sights set on another EIVA championship when conference play kicks off next week. This week, the Nittany Lions face Fairleigh Dickinson and will aim to play a smarter and a more complementary style of offense against a Knights team that has swept half of its opponents.