For the third time in a week, the weather threatened to postpone a home match for the Penn State men's volleyball team.

This time however, the snow could not stop the match from going on.

Penn State defeated Juniata 3-0 (30-20, 30-26, 30-24) last night to improve to 2-0 at Rec Hall.

"It's tough to play in Rec Hall," Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik said. "It's a big gym with high ceilings. It's a lot different than their [Juniata] little gym."

Penn State (5-3, 2-0) dominated from the first serve to the last.

The Lions outhit the Eagles .565 to .227, with junior middle hitter Keith Kowal leading the way, hitting .867 with 13 kills on 15 attempts. Sophomores Matt Proper and Nate Meerstein chipped in with eight and seven kills, respectively.

"We asserted our physical dominance," Pavlik said. "With Meers [Meerstein], Keith, and Dan, we are much bigger than they are used playing."

The Lions' size and power was too much for Juniata (2-3, 0-2) to handle. The Eagles only scored more than two points in a row once in the whole match. With the score 3-3 in game two, the Eagles strung together four straight points to take a 7-3 lead.

"We have a propensity to give up strings of points," Pavlik said. "Tonight we did a real good job of preventing that."

The lone bright spots for the Eagles were Kenny Eiser and Ricky Ziegler. Eiser had 16 kills and Ziegler had a match-high 43 assists.

"[Eiser] was really their only sideout weapon," Pavlik said. "He is a quick jumper and went under our block attempts quite a bit."

"[Juniata] have an unorthodox middle," Kowal said. "They are small, and Eiser is a quick hitter."

Even with Eiser, the Lions were never in danger of losing momentum. They held senior Ryan Genova, Juniata's team leader in kills, to just six kills.

"We are a much more physical team than them," Kowal said. "We just overpowered them in the middle."