In the middle of what was a bustling practice, a lone member of the Penn State men's volleyball team was darting around the court. The rest of the players stood watching, many of them with hands on their knees. Others were cheering on their comrade, who was chasing down and setting balls to an imaginary hitter.

It happened not once, but multiple times, with both setters and hitters having their individual time on the court.

Senior co-captain Nate Meerstein affectionately referred to it as "the pit" -- the stopping of a drill in order to fix an individual's recurring mistake.

"I got myself put in the pit today. That's just one of those things -- trying to eliminate errors," Meerstein said. "It's kinda like calling each other out, you know. So when we do screw up, we'll stop the drill and make it obvious that we weren't going for the ball, we didn't play the ball the way we were supposed to."

Eliminating errors is the theme of the No. 12 Nittany Lions' (2-4, 2-0 EIVA) practices all week.

Specific aspects of the game, Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik said, are never the focus of practices because in any given drill, players will have to pass, set or hit the ball. Instead, the team will work to reduce errors while simultaneously working on other aspects of the game.

"The past few games we've been killing ourselves late in the games with dumb errors, so we've been trying to minimize that," Meerstein said, echoing Pavlik's sentiment.

Physically, the Lions are able to compete with the nation's top competition, but momentary lapses late in games of recent matches have hindered their ability to pull out a big win.

"We've been trying to focus on 26-26 games, that's where a lot of our errors have been coming from," Meerstein said.

At the Outrigger Invitational Tournament in Hawaii, the Lions stayed close vs. No. 8 Ohio State, but against No. 5 UCLA and No. 7 Hawaii, they weren't able to close the gap late in the game.

Even against lesser competition, their most recent match vs. a lowly NYU team, a 3-0 win, the Lions had lulls in each game when they allowed the Violets to pick up a stretch of consecutive points.

"I thought there were times during the match in small stretches we got sucked into their rhythm of game, for three of four points here and there," Pavlik said after the NYU match.

Pavlik said that emphasizing mistake-prone areas by throwing certain players into "the pit" will help the Lions this week and as the season wears on.

"I think those are just reinforcing to them that they can do it the right way," Pavlik said.

"Do it the right way the first time, because the next seven times you're doing it the right way. I think any error or any correction of error goes to personal accountably."

Things are coming along for the team, Pavlik said.

"We're working hard. We're getting better slowly and surely," he said.