The No. 12 Penn State men's volleyball team can take one more step towards what they have been reaching for all season.

The NCAA Championships are just two games away and the Nittany Lions' (22-7, 14-1 EIVA) next step is Rutgers-Newark (10-19, 8-7 EIVA) in the second of two semifinal matches, which is scheduled to start at 8 tonight in Rec Hall.

The first match starts at 5 p.m. and features No. 2 seed Concordia against No. 3 seed George Mason. The winners of tonight's matches will face off on Saturday in the EIVA final for the right to earn the automatic berth into the NCAA Championships.

The Lions defeated New York University 3-0 (30-19, 33-31, 30-22) last Saturday to reach the semifinals, while Rutgers-Newark pounded Juniata 3-0 (30-19, 30-14, 30-20).

"I expect their jump serve to be in better rhythm and their passers to be in better rhythm against our serve," Pavlik said. "Their setter has grown into his position and I think they will come in here playing their best volleyball of the year."

The Scarlet Raiders, seeded No. 4, did not win a game off of the Lions in either of their two regular season contests, but lost four of the six games by a margin of four or less. Rutgers-Newark was able to out-hit the Lions in their last match-up, .262 to .258 — but that does not have the Lions' coach Mark Pavlik worried.

"All that mattered is that we outscored them," Pavlik said. "With rally scoring things like that can happen, there have been matches where we have been out-hit and won and matches where we out-hit the other team and lost."

The entire team has echoed each other in feeling that to be successful throughout the rest of the postseason that the team's blocking and serving must step up.

"We need to start serving tougher than we have been," sophomore Zach Slenker said. "We need to block like we were a couple of months ago. Blocking real tough is what makes us good, and against NYU we didn't do that."

The ride this season for the team has been a little bumpy as of late. They sandwiched in a three-match losing streak between an 11-match win streak and a seven-match win streak earlier this season. They have won three of their last five matches, but have not shown the dominance recently that was exhibited earlier in the season during their win streaks.

Penn State outside hitter Carlos Guerra said in practice yesterday that he felt the match will indicate whether the Lions have recovered.

"I think tomorrow night's match is going to tell us if we woke up from our nightmare from a couple of weeks ago or if we are still sleeping."