While most of State College was enjoying uncharacteristically great weather this weekend, the No. 11 men's volleyball team (15-7, 11-1 EIVA) was making a Jersey road trip to face EIVA opponents Rutgers-Newark (9-14, 5-4) and Princeton (5-11, 3-7 EIVA).

The Nittany Lions were anything but gracious guests, though.

On Friday night they downed a scrappy Rutgers-Newark side 3-1 (28-30, 30-27, 30-25, 30-26) and embarrassed Princeton in a 3-0 sweep (30-22, 30-22, 30-27) on Saturday.

With the weekend sweep, the Lions have won the EIVA regular season conference title. That honor allows the team to host the EIVA championships in Rec Hall on April 27-29, and gives the team a first-round bye in the tournament.

If they win the conference tournament, they get an automatic bid into the NCAA championships the first week of May, along with the winners of the MIVA and MPSF conferences. The NCAA committee then picks a fourth at-large team to fill out the Final Four. And where are the NCAA Championships being held this year?

At the oh-so-friendly confines of Rec Hall.

That made the wins that much more special.

"It feels great, sometimes going into EIVA matches, you know you're going to win, but we had that extra pressure to clinch," senior co-captain Nate Meerstein said. "It's good to know that we're hosting the EIVAs and hopefully we can win that and go on to the Final Four."

And don't call this regular-season conference title a comeback -- the Lions have been winning these titles for years, 18 years to be exact. But the team knows there's still more work to be done.

"We achieved that goal [of winning the EIVA], so we have a bye in the semifinals and now the EIVA season is done," head coach Mark Pavlik said. "We have a month to get ready and prepare for the whole playoff run."

With the way the Lions played this weekend, that playoff run may be a deep one.

Against Rutgers-Newark, Alex Gutor continued his late-season resurgence, pacing the team with a season-high 22 kills at a .486 clip. Kevin Wentzel chipped in a career-high 21 kills. The team as a whole hit .380 in that game.

Senior co-captain Matt Proper had seven kills on seven swings for a perfect and career-high 1.000 hitting percentage against Princeton. Senior setter Dan O'Dell made an early return from his knee injury to split time with Luke Murray. O'Dell dished out 20 assists in the game.

Needless to say, the team was pleased with its play.

"I thought that Rutgers came at us pretty hard at their place, and it's just tough to win on the road," Pavlik said. "Like a pitcher, we didn't have our best stuff but we took advantage of match ups we liked. Good grind-it-out wins."

With this next month, the team will try to get healthy and fix some holes in its game to ensure that it'll still be playing come May.

"We gotta keep getting better, it doesn't really matter who you play," Pavlik said. "We're playing some pretty good teams here the next four matches, and we're going to be in some hostile arenas for three of the four. We have to find a way to keep getting better."