Look at the statistics from Tuesday night's Penn State men's volleyball game, and something will be come immediately obvious.

The offensive performance the No. 11 Nittany Lions churned out against No. 14 Ohio State was quite impressive and ranks among one their best efforts of the year.

The Lions hit .342 on the match, their highest team hitting percentage against Ohio State in the teams' four meetings this season.

But what makes the overall production even more eye-opening is the fact that it wasn't dependent on one big performer, but three or four key players.

Senior co-captain Matt Proper led the way with his career-high in kills (29) on .444 hitting and scored 30.5 points.

"They just didn't have an answer for him," Penn State men's volleyball assistant coach Dennis Hohenshelt said.

Though the 6-foot-6 outside hitter was undoubtedly the star of the match, his supporting cast came up huge, too, and propelled the Lions late in the five-game victory.

Junior outside hitter Alex Gutor chipped in 20 kills at a .371 clip. Senior outside hitter Kevin Wentzel added 16 kills at a .310 hitting percentage, too.

The three were responsible for 65 of the Lions' 80 team kills and scored 74.5 points of 100 total team points. They were also instrumental in a late-match surge, Hohenshelt said.

"The strategy was well fitted for outside hitters because they were paying a lot of attention to our middle hitters," Gutor said. "[We] had good performances because they were playing attention to middles. Pretty much every time we had a one-on-one, and it wasn't as difficult when going against one person."

Proper leads the team in kills (326) and is hitting .395 on the season, while Gutor has tallied 151 kills at a .322 clip and Wentzel has put away 159 balls this year.

Hohenshelt attributes their recent success to their positioning on the court and the dominance of teammate Nate Meerstein who has helped get them in isolated situations for easier kills.

"It's really the same thing we've been seeing all year really," Hohenshelt said. "Everyone is so concerned with Meers that nobody wants to let him get free swings and one-on-ones and the same thing with Max [Holt] now. We've been much more effective with the back row.

"I think our offense was pretty steady throughout. I thought we did some real nice things."