More than just a quiet confidence, it might be more fitting to call the attitude carried by the Penn State men's volleyball team a cockiness. The swagger it carried might have been justified, but on Saturday the predators became the prey. The No. 9 Nittany Lions' hubris finally caught up to them and they were taken down.

Saturday night's four-game loss at the hands of No. 15 George Mason -- who, as it turns out, had a helluva sports weekend -- was the Lions' first conference loss since March 2004. In the two-year span, the Lions had not only gone undefeated, but dismissed most of their EIVA competition in pretty convincing fashion.

The Lions' East Coast dominance, though, was revealed to me over time.

I was new to campus this fall, but soon I began to learn more about the team and the conference in which they play. And, to be honest, I was surprised.

First of all, there is no Big Ten conference play for men's volleyball. Since many Big Ten schools are national powers in wrestling, men's volleyball is a commonly cut sport, due to Title IX regulations. With no Big Ten, Penn State is left with only the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA).

The EIVA is one of three men's volleyball conferences, and the only one on the East Coast, leaving the Lions to face athletic juggernauts such as Princeton and NYU.

So, naturally, Penn State has been dominating the conference since the mid-1980s because it has the facilities, size and athletic prestige needed to build a successful program, unlike many of the other schools in the EIVA.

I recognized the team's superiority, and it became apparent that the members of the team recognized it, too, as I soon noticed a slight complacency that washed over the team, especially after their midseason success. The Lions started the season with a lackadaisical victory over Saint Francis (Pa.), before dismantling any and every team in their path -- including six EIVA teams -- as they rattled off a 10-match win streak during their run.

Mixed among their conference schedule, the Lions also took on some West Coast and Midwestern teams and stole a victory over then-No. 3 Long Beach State and dropped No. 11 Ohio State twice. Their confidence slowly mounted, and, it seems, their heads grew proportionally. Soon their comments seemed to indicate that they were brushing off their conference matches, almost as if East Coast volleyball bored them.

Perhaps the Lions were bored, but they simply did not expect the Patriots to put up the fight they did. Like many of the EIVA teams, the Lions assumed George Mason would roll over and die, the way a Rutgers-Newark might. They grew comfortable with their position of dominance.

In fairness, George Mason was the EIVA's true hope to knock off Penn State and is clearly the most athletic team outside of Happy Valley. The Patriots' only conference loss came Feb. 25 to Penn State, and they have been led by standouts Shaun Powell and Hudson Bates. Powell and Bates have become some of the biggest names from the East and are two big reasons for the team's success.

Nevertheless, the Lions were overconfident and they paid for it. Now the trick is to parlay the loss into motivation to help drive them through the rest of the regular season, into the EIVA tournament.