One more time the Penn State men's volleyball team traveled to the West Coast to take on some of the nation's best competition, and, one more time, it returned with tallies in the loss column. During a trip to Hawaii in mid-January, the No. 8 Nittany Lions lost three consecutive matches and last week's outing in California mirrored their first tour.

Preceding a trip to California, the Lions dismissed Princeton, 3-0 (30-15, 30-23, 30-22) on March 3 in Rec Hall.

The Lions then picked up and headed to the Golden State, dropping matches to the University of California-Irvine, 3-0 (21-30, 27-30, 25-30) and Southern California, 3-0 (26-30, 22-30, 27-30) on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. The losses snapped the Lions' 10-match win streak.

"We played the way we should against Princeton and took care of business," Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik said. "Against Irvine we played well, but not well enough."

Penn State (11-6, 8-0 EIVA) set a season high in team hitting against Princeton (.458) and was propelled by freshman outside hitter Matt Anderson. Anderson, like many of the starters, only played two games and finished with eight kills at a career-high .636 clip. Senior captains Matt Proper and Nate Meerstein each finished with seven kills and hit an identical .875. The Tigers fell to 2-6 in the EIVA and 3-10 overall.

On Wednesday the Lions took on No. 2 UC-Irvine, in Irvine, Calif. The Anteaters -- who upset No. 1 Brigham Young University 3-2 on Friday -- showed why they are deserving of a high national ranking against the Lions, and were able to use power to disrupt Penn State's defense.

"They don't back off with the heat, they bring," Pavlik said.

Leading the way for Penn State against the Anteaters (18-3) was outside hitter Proper, who again churned out a solid performance, finishing with a team high in kills (13) while hitting at a .435 percentage. Also anchoring the squad was fellow captain Meerstein, as the 6-foot-9 middle hitter finished with eight kills at a .571 hitting percentage.

As a team, the Lions hit .345 but were out-done by the Anteaters, who hit .511 and were led by the trio of Matt Webber, Jayson Jablonsky and David Smith.

"There's a lot of things that went wrong out there," Proper said. "Our passing wasn't great, our hitters were pretty streaky. It was up and down, I think, from everyone. We need to be a little more consistent overall. Irvine, they converted on every opportunity there given and sometimes we don't do that."

From Irvine, the team headed north to Los Angeles for the matchup against No. 14 USC. The Trojans (10-11) were led by their national star Juan Figueroa and hit .323 as a team.

Figueroa notched 13 kills and had a team-high four blocks. Penn State could only muster a .254 hitting percentage and were plagued by poor passing early on.

"I think that if we pass against USC it is a little bit different story, but we still gotta dig balls," Pavlik said.

"We finally settled down in Game 3, but it was too little, too late."