As men's volleyball head coach Mark Pavlik would put it, "It's kind of the volleyball weekend for us."

With the Pennsylvania Volleyball Coaches Association holding its annual clinic in State College and USA Volleyball running a junior national qualifying tournament as well, it would only make sense for there to be Penn State volleyball played too.

Thus the creation of the Penn State Invitational as it has come to be under Pavlik.

Normally, Penn State would've invited a west coast team or two to spice up the competition, but with other Rec Hall scheduling commitments, the No. 7 Nittany Lions (4-2, 1-0 EIVA) will face No. 15 Saint Francis tonight at 7 in the main gym, and Geroge Mason tomorrow at 8 p.m. in the south gym.

"I'm probably not gonna ask an Irvine or UCLA to come in and play in south gym," Pavlik said. "Let's show them our best."

While EIVA opponents Saint Francis and George Mason lack the name recognition of West Coast powerhouses UC-Irvine and UCLA, Pavlik and the Lions still know that it will require their A-game to leave the weekend with two more in the win column.

"They're playing with a confidence now that you have to go back to the early to mid-90s to find a Saint Francis team playing with that type of confidence," Pavlik said. "Marc Honore [of Saint Francis] is certainly, offensively, one of the most gifted guys in the NCAA. If everything happens the way it should, I'm not sure we have anyone on our team that can stop Honore."

In addition to the Saint Francis star, Penn State will also face George Mason star outside hitter William Price. On the season Price is averaging 7.2 kills per game, the best average in the nation.

In order for the Lions to perform as well as Pavlik hopes, they'll need to shake their run of sluggish starts.

"I want to see us come out and play a little bit more intelligently and maybe more crisply through the early part of the matches and games," Pavlik said. "Sometimes, I think we come out and we have to wait until someone hits us in the face with a 2 x 4 of competition to say you're in a game."

Hoping to avoid adding to the team's streak of slow starts, senior Alex Gutor says the team worked on drills this week in practice that simulate the beginning portions of a match, and he hopes that the team's woes have been fixed.

"We need to focus on our side of the net and start the game really well and then I think things will take care of itself," Gutor said.

The Lions will look to prove their start of game struggles are behind them when they play against what could be the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in the EIVA.