In the season's first Big Ten road match, the Penn State women's volleyball team wasn't perfect but managed to scrape by and remain undefeated.

A crowd of 1,339 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa, saw the No. 2 Nittany Lions (13-0, 2-0 Big Ten) put together and effort that coaches and players alike weren't exactly happy with. The Lions beat Iowa, 3-0 (30-25, 30-18, 30-26), and needed the help of a third-game surge from freshman outside hitter Megan Hodge to help wrap up the win.

"I don't think we were very sharp tonight, but it just demonstrates that we have some young kids," Penn State head coach Russ Rose said. "They struggle, it takes time to get things work out. It was not a very good match for us, but we were fortunate enough to win."

The Lions hit only .291 on the match, far below their season average going into last week, .364, which ranked second nationally. Iowa (11-3, 0-2) hit .105 on the match.

But if a bright spot could be plucked from the performance, it would have to be the continued growth of Hodge, who led Penn State with a match-high 23 kills on .298 hitting.

Early on, though, she started off slowly, and said that she couldn't figure out why she "was playing that bad." But coming out in the third game, after watching Penn State start off slowly, something clicked in her head.

"We were making bad decisions and I felt that I could be a contributor in that situation," she said. "And I just turned on I guess."

In the third game Hodge went on a tear, putting together back-to-back kills at times, and the whole pace of the action slowed for her. Speaking on her late-match performance, Hodge sounded as if she's really settling into a groove on the collegiate level.

"It was just all mental," she said. "I felt like I'm going to finish this game for our team. I want to do that. It's weird when there comes a point when you can see things a lot clearer. ... You can see holes in the blocking and there were just times in the first games when I didn't see that, but I saw it in the third game."

Her moment of clarity helped the Lions pull through, as well as the passing performance junior Kate Price.

Price, inserted into a starting role thanks to the injured of senior opposite Cassy Salyer, had only two kills but her passing is what made the difference. She added seven digs and had success on serve-receive, she said.

"Everyday we do serve-and-pass [in practice], so its expected to be good," Price said. "They kept serving me, and I was passing well, so it was like they were adding to our game."

Despite the win and the solid play of a few, Rose isn't ready to call the win wholly satisfying.

"We were certainly not playing like a team that has a lot of confidence and control of all of the options," he said. "I thought we played better at home than we did on the road, that would be my only ironclad feeling on that -- we played better at home than we did on the road. We have a lot of work to do."