To the east of State College lies one of the men's volleyball team's main rivals, Rutgers-Newark. Even further east lies the breeding ground of two players who will join that rivalry.

Grenady Schevchenko, a setter, and Igor Akinshyn, a middle blocker, are Ukrainians who arrived at Rutgers-Newark at the beginning of the fall semester.

They have since joined the men's volleyball team and will travel to Penn State for this weekend's Mizuno-Nitanny Lion Invitational.

Penn State swept Rutgers-Newark in a December exhibition match in Lancaster. However, at that time the two Ukrainians were not competing.

Thus these two are unknown entities added to a team that lost to Penn State in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament.

However, in a Rutgers-Newark match with George Mason last week, they had already impressed their competition -- George Mason Coach Ron Shayka.

"While I was talking with the George Mason coach," Penn State assistant coach Mark Pavlik said. "He said they were good athletes and they certainly have brought up the level of play (of Rutgers-Newark)."

Rutgers-Newark Coach Bob Bertucci is cautious about his new talent, saying that their potential impact is still unknown this early in the season.

"It's a mistake to think that any two players are a cure-all to anything," he said. "We have two (more) players now but Penn State has twelve who can come in and play any time. The program with the most depth is still definitely Penn State."

Experience and athletic ability are Schevchenko's and Akinshyn's attributes, Bertucci said. Not mentioned, though, is their height. They both stand 6-foot-2, an indistinguishable height for a middle blocker but a good height for a setter.

Foreign players are nothing new to NCAA squads, of course. Penn State itself has four players whose hometowns also lie outside the continental United States.

But Pavlik explained that recruiting players from the Commonwealth of Independent States would be difficult for Penn State. Rutgers-Newark has an inherent advantage in recruiting commonwealth players because assistant coach Boris Lapshin used to live in the Soviet Union.

"Rutgers can identify players whose background would let them into American institutions more readily," Pavlik said.