One and done. One loss is now all it takes to put an end to the Penn State men's volleyball season, one that has already seen milestones, breakout seasons and exceeded regular season expectations.

After defeating Rutgers-Newark last night, the No. 2 Nittany Lions still have the EIVA championship match to win before they can make travel arrangements to Los Angeles for the NCAA tournament next Thursday.

It is, however, the opinion of most men's volleyball fans and connoisseurs that Penn State (29-3, 14-0 EIVA) will win its seventh consecutive conference championship tomorrow, landing it a spot in the NCAA semifinals.

Therefore, with today being The Daily Collegian's final publishing date, now is the time to preview Penn State's national championship hopes.

Penn State

At the midway point of the season, Lions head coach Mark Pavlik told his team that they had just completed the best first half of the season in his 11 years at the helm. The second half wasn't much different.

The strength of the Lions is clearly their blocking game. This year senior co-captain and All-American middle hitter Keith Kowal led the nation with 1.76 blocks per game while setting Penn State's all-time single-season as well as career blocking records.

Fellow middle hitter Nate Meerstein and opposite Matt Proper are also dominant blockers, averaging 2.65 between them.

"They're a strong hitting and blocking team," UCLA head coach Al Scates said. "They're the strongest team I've seen from the East -- period."

Seeing as how Scates has been coaching UCLA volleyball for 43 years and has 18 NCAA titles, that compliment carries a lot of weight.

What hasn't been carrying a lot of weight this season is Penn State's passing against physical serving teams.

"How well we can pass against the strong serving teams will determine how far we go," Pavlik said.

Against UCLA in March, the Lions out-blocked, out-hit and out-dug the host Bruins, but could not find a way to pass against UCLA's booming serves, falling 3-0.

"[They] don't see serving like that on the East," Scates said of Pavlik and the Lions. "You can put balls in the machine and practice like that, but it isn't the same. But that's why we won: We served a lot better than Penn State passed."

Brigham Young head coach Tom Peterson -- who in 1994 coached Penn State to its only men's volleyball national championship -- believes the wildcard for the Lions is whether or not they can pass.

"Even to stay in the match against Penn State, you have to be in there or win the serve-receive battle," said Peterson, whose Cougars were 1-1 against Penn State this year, but have already been eliminated from postseason play.

"If they pass well, they have an offense that is very hard to stop," Peterson said. "They're a pretty good serving team, but they block very well too. So if they serve and take the opponent out of their offense fairly often, their big block is gonna make it hard."

If they pass well, the Lions will probably have outside hitter Aaron Smith to thank. Smith has been the most consistent passer of Penn State's three outside hitters, and Pavlik says the sophomore has shown more improvement over the past six weeks than anyone else on the team.

"Smitty is the most underrated guy on our team," Pavlik said.

Underrated or not, the Lions are hoping that Smith and the other passers can step up to the challenge likely to be served before them at Pauley Pavilion Thursday.

Both Peterson and Scates, with 20 national titles between them, agreed that passing is one of the only things that can hold the Lions back.

"If they pass well, they can beat anybody on any given night," Peterson said.

Similarly, Scates added this: "If they can pass better, they've got a great shot at winning -- that's the bottom line."

How to beat the Lions

"If we were playing them we would have to pass well so that we could stay in the match," Peterson said.

"Then we would have to serve well to counterbalance their attack. I think it boils down to serve and serve-receive."