The No. 7 Penn State men's volleyball team came away with a win last night against a previously unbeaten No. 11 Ohio State team, but it did so in an unimpressive way.
As a team, the Nittany Lions attacked at a very respectable .397 clip. They converted 73 of 131 attacks, but curiously enough, 87 of those chances were taken by Penn State's new look left side.
Continuing the offensive success story of the Lion's upset win over Hawaii this past Saturday, head coach Mark Pavlik and Co. chose to leave sophomore Matt Anderson on the outside with senior Alex Gutor.
The tandem responded by both posting career highs in kills last night against Ohio State.
Gutor contributed 27. Anderson added 20, besting his career-high of 18 set against one game ago.
However, the next highest kill total on the team was 13 by Max Holt, and from there it dropped off to four by three different players.
"I'm here to do the job, whatever it takes. If that's 51 attempts, I'll take it. If it's 60 I'll take it," Gutor said.
Gutor entered the game ranking sixth nationally in kills per game, and Anderson is an immensely talented player. The problem wasn't that two thirds of Penn State's attacks came from players who had no business taking so many swings.
The problem was that two thirds of the offense came from any two players.
Afterwards, Gutor didn't choose to bask in the glory of his new career high in kills, but instead choose to focus on the team's accomplishment.
"I know I'm happy with the kills, but I think overall I could have personally played a lot better. I mean kills, they don't mean really nothing to me." Gutor said.
"I'm just trying to put my team in position to win and get that 'W.' "
In the end, Gutor and Anderson could have combined for 87 attempts, or they could have combined for all 131, the point is that the Lions came away with the 'W'. While the unbalanced attack could prove costly further down the road, for now, they're the seventh ranked team in the nation, and if that's a problem, it's a problem any number of teams would love to have.
