With the Big Ten season underway for the No. 3 Penn State women's volleyball team, some questions have been answered.

And some questions still remain.

Nittany Lions coach Russ Rose had voiced his concern about the lineup earlier in the season, and he continues to look for some solutions after Penn State lost its first two conference games. One of those losses came to a Northwestern team that started the season 0-7, and had dropped 14 straight games to the Lions prior to this weekend.

After the losses, which marked the first time Penn State started the Big Ten season 0-2 since it joined in 1991, Rose said the blame should fall on him, not the players.

"I am not going to point fault at the players," he said. "The fault rests with me. I made a couple of decisions that I think maybe have proven to be bad choices."

Those choices, Rose added, included playing some players that were not getting the job done. He admits he should have pulled those who were not performing in favor of those who were waiting for an opportunity.

"I am not pointing the blame at the players," Rose continued. "I am pretty disappointed with a lot of their performances, but I am not necessarily pleased with my performance. I don't think I did a very good job of managing the talent and getting them to understand over the last four weeks what it's going to take to be successful in the Big Ten.

"I know I've tried it, I know I've discussed it, but obviously I didn't do a good enough job of doing it."

Junior Katie Schumacher disagrees with her coach.

"We're the ones out there playing," she said. "I think coach has confidence in whoever he puts out there and I don't think it's necessarily him to blame. We need to take a look at ourselves on the court and prepare ourselves better, work harder in practice and go from there.

"We didn't play our best. Wisconsin and Northwestern are very tough. So, I'm not going to take that away from them. But I think there are other things we need to work on, on our side of the net. And we need to worry about that first."

The concern about the conference season was not a big one initially. But it began to surface nearly two weeks into the season when Rose was hoping he would have a lineup ready. That lineup he was searching for never really materialized.

"Part of it is that the players are so up and down in practice," Rose said earlier this year. "But we're going to have to make some decisions and go with it."

The decisions seemed to be working, as Penn State piled up 11 consecutive victories, including 10 sweeps. However, his team continued to practice without the same fire they possessed in their games.

"Whoever is out there should be going hard," junior Mishka Levy said. "We have been practicing really bad and that caught up with us."

The team's less-than-spectacular performance has caused the concern from a couple of weeks ago to grow a little larger for the 22-year coach of the Lions.

"I think we're pretty far behind schedule," Rose said. "What I think is that I am asking the players to do some things, and they're saying they can do those things, but they can't do those things. So, it seems like we didn't do a good enough job of getting them to understand the importance of practicing those things so they're a little better at it."

However, Rose is not, by any means, throwing the season away or expecting much more than a handful of losses. After all, he hasn't lost less than 26 games in any year during his career, and he has averaged 33 wins a season. He realizes there are still 18 conference games left, and that provides 18 more opportunities to make something happen with his team.

"I think we'll progress throughout the season," he said. "I don't think you're as good as you think you are when you win and you're as bad as you think you are when you lose."