After a week layoff from a long road trip, the Penn State men's volleyball team settled back into EIVA play Saturday, defeating Springfield College 3-1 (30-20, 22-30, 30-23, 30-27).

The Nittany Lions (14-5, 8-0 EIVA) came out soft in game one against the Pride (3-13, 0-11), allowing them to open an early 7-3 lead against the heavily favored Lions. But, sophomore Kevin Hodge's ace gave the Lions their first lead of the match at 11-10. The Lions would continue the onslaught in game one, winning 30-20. Springfield hit just .042 for game one.

Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik removed the starters for game two, as he often does, giving the second unit a chance to play. The Pride took advantage of the move opening up a 15-10 lead at the technical timeout.

"We played very uninspired," Pavlik said. "It looked like we were expecting them to rollover. We made bad decisions, it seemed like we were on auto-pilot."

The unit — consisting of freshmen Nate Matthews, Richard Schneider, Rhonee Rojas, Alex Weaver, Norman Keil, Josh Mowrey, and senior libero Steve Aird — all struggled the entire game and hit .000.

"We came out and tried to cruise in game two," Matthews said. "We realized after we lost that we have to play like Penn State not just walk out on the court."

Meanwhile, sophomore Greg Lardo paced the Pride with 15 kills, six digs and six block assists on the evening. His teammate, freshman Christopher Hosley, had 14 kills to go with three block assists. The Pride hit a match-high .478 to win game two.

A similar lineup came out in game three and dominated the court. Mowrey totaled a career-high nine kills for the match with four of them coming in game three. Weaver also had four kills in game three to lead the Lions to a 30-23 victory.

"I play against the best players in the country in practice," Mowrey said. "We had a good week of practice this week, but unfortunately it didn't show today."

Once again in game four the Pride came out strong, leading 15-11 at the technical timeout. Pavlik decided to reinsert the starters one-by-one in game four and the lone sub left on the court would be Matthews.

Matthews would total 36 assists on the evening along with four kills. Sophomore Carlos Guerra and Hodge each had three kills in the last half of the deciding game four. The Penn State starters drew even at 24 and, on the strength of a Guerra kill, the Lions won game four 30-27.

"I think there comes times when we just have to be bigger and better," Pavlik said. "We had that emotion, but unfortunately we didn't get it until the third or fourth game. The guys did a good job, we inserted our more physical players and we scored points against Springfield."

The Lions host Loyola of Illinois in a non-conference match-up tomorrow at 7:30 p.m.