Florida's warmth and beauty would look good to any Happy Valley native at this time of the year.

It looks even better to the Penn State women's volleyball team, because that's where the Sweet 16 for its NCAA tournament region is located.

No. 10 Penn State (30-4) locked up a spot in the Sweet 16 with wins over Robert Morris (23-12) and Pittsburgh (26-6) this weekend at Rec Hall. The Nittany Lions got a 3-0 (30-10, 30-18, 30-11) victory against the Colonials on Friday and a 3-1 (25-30, 33-31, 30-21, 30-21) win against the Panthers on Saturday.

The Lions next task will be taking on the No. 6 Kansas State Wildcats (30-4) in Gainesville, Fla., on Friday.

"[Losing] wasn't even an option," Penn State senior middle hitter Cara Smith said. "The last two years were such a disappointment that we've been working hard for this."

Penn State made its way out of the second round for the first time since 2000. After having lost at home in the second round the last two seasons, to UCLA and Temple, the Lions almost faced the same outcome for a third straight year.

Pittsburgh coach Chris Beerman said Friday that his team was nervous in a first round win against the University of Pennsylvania but he guaranteed that his team would play much better against Penn State. For the first half of the match, the Panthers lived up to their coaches billing.

Pittsburgh's style of game is swinging hard and playing big, and that is what it did in the first game, taking advantage of a Penn State defense that was not at the top of its game.

The Panthers racked up a .367 hitting percentage in the first game, led by junior Megan Miller, who connected for seven kills on nine attempts.

"I think we were ready to go," Smith said. "We just weren't executing the way we should have. We weren't getting on the hitters we needed to get on."

The hitters the Lions needed to worry about were Miller, Wendy Hatlestad and Sarah Rollman. The trio combined for 61 of Pittsburgh's 69 kills. Hatlestad led the Panthers with 23 kills, in the process setting a Pittsburgh single-season record of 555 kills.

"It's not a surprise identifying what Pitt's going to do, it's a problem trying to stop what it is Pitt does so well," Penn State women's volleyball coach Russ Rose said.

Pittsburgh almost took a commanding two-game lead in a second-game battle. Neither team led by more than three points as the Lions ended up with a 33-31 win. With a newly energized Rec Hall crowd behind it, Penn State was able to feed off the moment for the rest of the match.

"We kind of got fired up and we realized what we were playing for," junior outside hitter Ashley Pederson said. "Our emotions took over after that."

Penn State outhit Pittsburgh .341 to .093 in the final two games, winning both. Pederson (23 kills), Syndie Nadeau (17), Smith (19) and Cassy Salyer (12) all recorded double-digits in kills and hit over .300. The Lions also benefited from a Panthers team that saw an increase in hitting errors each game.

"It was a typical Pitt-Penn State game that I remember from the old days that had lots of emotion," Rose said.

After Penn State's win against Robert Morris, in which the Lions hit .451 and had a season-high 16 blocks, Colonials coach Rob Thomas said Penn State looked like a team that could make it to the Elite Eight or even Final Four. They'll find out in sunny Florida.