The men's volleyball team begins its Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association schedule at 7:30 tonight in Rec Hall against the team it most loves to beat -- George Mason.

Perhaps it's fitting that the latest installment of this heated rivalry will be taking place on St. Valentine's Day.

"We always love to play George Mason," senior co-captain Todd Shirley said. "It's the biggest rivalry we really have right now. They knocked us out two years ago from a bid to the Final Four, and a lot of us were on the team at that point, so that's still fresh in our minds."

"I think it's going to be a big deal," Coach Tom Peterson said. "We don't want to lose to them, especially at home."

The Lions (6-5) are still trying to break a slump in which they've lost four out of the last five. Penn State placed third at the Golden Dome Classic at Rutgers-Newark last weekend, losing to Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne and defeating Ohio State. If it is going to beat the Patriots, the play of middle blockers Shirley, Kevin Mosbacher, Winfield Evens and Tito Nunez will be the key.

"If we can stop their middle attack and we can pass, I think we'll be pretty good," Peterson said. "I guess we're going to have to work with our blocking scheme and just execute a little bit better. We've just got to gut it out. We're not the tallest team in the middle. We've just got to work harder than the other team."

"The middle's been a weak spot," Shirley agreed. "We weren't able to really take IPFW's middle out of the game . . . but if we can take George Mason's middle out, then the rest of our game should be able to pull us through and we should win without too much problem.

George Mason (10-7) is coming off a four-game loss to UCLA in the finals of the Virginia Volleyball Association Volleybowl.

The Patriots, No. 14 in the AVCA Tachikara poll, are led by middle blockers Bob Rubino, who sports a .370 hitting percentage, and Scott Metcalf, who averages 1.22 blocks per game. Junior outside hitter Robbie Bailey averages a team-high 4.4 kills and 2.27 digs per game.

Senior right-side hitter Guillo Silva, who totaled 46 kills in the two matches last weekend, leads the No. 11 Lions.

Penn State's strong bench has helped it in the first quarter of the season. Co-captain John Wasielewski and Larry Perry have played well as spot-starters or as backups to outside hitters Charlie Bertran and Jorge Perez. Also, setter Jim Schall is always ready to come in for Scott Miller, who won the job from Schall a couple of weeks ago.

"We're pretty deep as far as closeness of talent," Peterson said. "There's not like a clear-cut choice with who should and should not be in there, so we have a lot of people that we can depend on."

A few players, however, are uncomfortable with the number of players who are being shuttled in and out of the lineup.

"We're not a really stable team yet," Bertran said. "I think that has a lot to do with the changes Coach is doing with the lineups. I think it would help a little bit if we would have a lineup by now. But that's no excuse not to be winning."

"Well, if we're winning, it's pretty tough to change (the lineup)," Peterson said. "But if you need to change it because you're losing, I'm sure that we'll end up doing some things along the lineup. It'd be nice not to have to change the lineup at any time."

This is the second 1990 meeting between the two teams; they met in the semifinals of the Mizuno/Nittany Lion Invitational in January, in which the Lions won a five-set thriller, 6-15, 15-3, 15-9, 2-15, 15-10.

Penn State, however, would be wise not to get off to a slow start as it did in that match.

"I think that you won't see that on either side," Peterson said. "If it does happen that somebody gets beat up, I expect that to be them more than us. I think we're going to be a little bit more prepared (and) a little bit more enthusiastic in front of our crowd. So, I don't think you'll see us getting blown out."

"I think we're at a critical point in the season," Shirley said. "We've had a couple key losses that we've got to put behind us, but I think we're more than ready to make that jump. We're not going to just sit down and let the season go to waste jus

Notes: The Lions will face Manitoba tomorrow at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, on Friday at Rec Hall and on Saturday at Conestoga Valley High School. All three matches will begin at 7:30 p.m. . . . Penn State then has home matches next Monday and Wednesday against Navy and Rutgers-Newark, respectively, before embarking on its spring-break road trip to Utah and California.