During this past weekend's road trip, the No. 2 Penn State women's volleyball team continued its roller coaster journey through the regular season. The year kicked off with some degree of uncertainty and eventually gave way to a more uniform team makeup, but now, the fabric of the team seems to be changing once again.

With freshman setter Jessica Yanz returning from an injury, the Nittany Lions (19-0, 8-0 Big Ten) have reverted to a two-setter system that was used earlier in the season.

At times this weekend, freshmen Alisha Glass and Yanz were used simultaneously to direct the offense in the 6-2 system, which allows Glass, a hitter in high school, to be used as an offensive weapon.

"When I'm in and I'm a hitter it's a different thing," Glass said. "When I get a chance, I think it's fun."

Also enjoying what may become a new role with the team, Yanz said it was nice to get "working with the girls again."

"I was really excited to go in," she said. "I was just kind of waiting for my chance to go in."

A month ago yesterday, Yanz said, she dislocated her right shoulder when diving for a ball in practice. Currently, she said she's still rehabbing it but "it's fine."

So, Glass directed the Lions' offense for the past month in a 5-1, single-setter system; and she enjoyed a good deal of success. In fact, on Sept. 11 she was the first Penn State player ever named National Player of the Week.

Currently, Glass leads the Big Ten in assists per game in conference matches (14.56).

But this weekend, Penn State head coach Russ Rose played around with the lineups. On Friday against Northwestern, Glass had three kills on nine attempts. She also had 47 assists. Yanz had three assists and two digs.

Against the Illini on Sunday, Yanz came in and had two digs and Glass posted four kills on 15 swings.

Twice this season, Yanz had 17 assists -- her career-high -- the last of which came against West Virginia on Sept. 2. Prior to her injury, Yanz recorded double-digit assists multiple times in the season.

"I thought Jess came in and played very well this weekend," sophomore outside hitter Nicole Fawcett said on Sunday. "We can trust her."

Last week Rose expressed some concerns regarding the makeup of the team.

He said that he hadn't been able to really explore all of the team's options because of nagging injuries that have forced people to the sideline throughout the year. And due to time constrains, he doesn't have to luxury of finding what fits best at this point in the year.

"We're still trying to find out what our best use of the personnel really is," he said yesterday. "We looked at a couple of things this week and every time we looked at them the opposing team scored a bunch of points to force us to back out of what we were doing."

Rose was unsure whether he would used a 5-1 or 6-2 this weekend.