The men's volleyball team gave considerable playing time to most of its bench last night as it defeated Navy, 15-2, 15-10, 15-5, in the South Gym at Rec Hall.

Tito Nunez had 14 kills in just two games and Tom Gingrich added 12 kills to lead the Lions. Penn State is now 9-5 against NCAA competition and 2-0 in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association.

"It's real nice to get everybody in the match and everybody played well," Coach Tom Peterson said. "We came out, we played tough and all our guys got in some valuable playing time."

"They were jacked up," Navy coach Patrick Nicholas said. "They came out to kick our butts and they did. The whole team was jacked up."

The Lions jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first game on an ace by setter Jim Schall, who played the whole match and finished with 49 assists.

A pair of combined blocks by Nunez and co-captain John Wasielewski made the score 5-1 and forced a Navy timeout. After the timeout, however, the Lions continued to roll holding the Midshipmen to one more point the rest of the first game.

"We just passed and kept our serves in," co-captain Todd Shirley said. "We just did what we do best and it was good to see that we were able to work right through that match. We didn't really stall or have any down points, we just kept working hard and we got in and out and we got the job done."

"I think we just kind of overpowered them," Peterson said. "They're in a slump right now."

To be fair, Navy was without three of its starters. Two had been suspended for missing curfew Sunday night and another was injured. These were not the same Midshipmen who looked respectable in taking Penn State to four games at the Mizuno/Nittany Lion Invitational in January.

"We had a lot of different people in there," Nicholas said. "We're struggling. We're not playing as a team right now.

"We've got to . . . get back to fundamentals. We're going to cancel our spring break to California."

The Lions showed no ill effects of their three exhibition losses to Manitoba, one of the best teams in North America.

"We could have had a letdown after playing Manitoba . . . and we didn't," Peterson said. "There's always a tendency that when another team is in a slump or not quite as good as you are at that particular time, you've got to be careful not to play down to that level. We talked about that before the game, and that's what we concentrated on -- staying intense."

Game two was the only one in which Navy seemed to put up a fight. The Midshipmen jumped out to a 4-1 lead behind the play of freshman middle blocker Tom Kait.

But the Lions, led by Nunez and Larry Perry, who had six kills, fought back to tie the score at four on a service ace by Perry.

Penn State then powered out to a 13-7 advantage, but Navy kept fighting. Led by server Jeff Kristick, the Midshipmen closed to within 13-10, before a kill by Kevin Mosbacher ended Navy's last real scoring opportunity. The Lions ended the second game with a pair of Nunez kills.

"Tito's a good player," Peterson said. "If he just keeps working hard, he can be an All-American some day. It just depends on him, how hard he wants to work at it."

The Lions cleared their bench in the third game, putting Michael Schall, Dave Yost, Ricky Roper and Ben Myles on the court along with Gingrich and Jim Schall. Still playing against Navy's starting unit, the Lions put the match away quickly, 15-5.

Roper, Myles and Yost combined for 11 kills in 16 attempts in the final game and 5'10" freshman Michael Schall had three kills, a service ace and a solo block for match point.

"I was glad to see that a lot of our guys who hadn't seen a lot of playing time got to go out," Shirley said. "They did a real good job tonight."

Notes: Penn State will face EIVA rival Rutgers-Newark at 7:30 tomorrow night in Rec Hall before embarking on its spring break trip to Utah and California, which begins Friday and Saturday at Brigham Young.