An old sports saying goes, "All records are meant to be broken."

It has held true in Penn State sports this season. First, Penn State women's basketball player Kelly Mazzante broke the Big Ten career scoring record. Now, Penn State men's volleyball senior libero Ricky Mattei will try to make history by breaking the team's career digs mark tonight against Juniata.

Mattei enters the match five digs shy of tying the record of 820, set by Ramon Hernandez in 1994.

"The only times I've heard about the record was at the beginning of the season and when I was reading the paper the other day," Mattei said. "When you're on the court, you just don't think about things like that."

On Friday, Mattei became only the second player in school history to reach 800 digs. He entered selected company when he recorded his second dig during game two against Sacred Heart.

"It's kind of weird to know that in one or two matches, who knows," Mattei said. "It's right there. It's kind of hard talking about individual honors when all you want to do is win a national championship."

This record could come with an asterisk because, after the NCAA changed to rally scoring in 2001, players are on the court twice as much as their predecessors who hold the records.

"This is a great achievement over a career," Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik said. "It's a rally score record."

With 14 matches remaining, Mattei will most likely destroy the 10-year old record. He could possibly become the first Penn State player to exceed the 900-digs mark in a career.

With all of this talk of breaking records in the air, the match at hand can slip into the background. The Nittany Lions come into today's match riding a high after defeating one of the best teams in the nation, eighth-ranked Ball State, and now have to play a team they usually destroy. That's not the whole story, however.

"[Juniata] will be a much better team at home," Pavlik said. "They will be much more comfortable hitting balls in their smaller gym. We just have to play a physical match like we did at home and we'll win again."

The only thing that could keep Mattei from breaking the record tonight would be a blowout victory in which Mattei would be pulled. This is a likely scenario because the last time the two teams met, Mattei recorded only one dig.