As his team took the floor for the second set Saturday night against Ohio State, coach Mark Pavlik realized he made a mistake.
When the Penn State men's volleyball team takes the court at the start of a set, it has a set service rotation of Edgardo Goas, Will Price, Max Lipsitz, Ryan Sweitzer, Joe Sunder and Max Holt.
However, as the Nittany Lions took the court, they did so with an error on the lineup card.
Pavlik had accidentally switched Price and Holt, meaning that during Penn State's rotation, there would be a point where middle hitters Lipsitz and Holt would both be in the front row. There would also be another rotation where the Lions would have no middle blocker in the front.
Despite this error, the Lions managed to focus and handle their assignments with ease before Pavlik finally called a timeout.
"After awhile, I think we were down 5-3 and I called a timeout just to let them yell at me and let them know I screwed up," Pavlik said.
That lineup error turned out to be the only blemish on what was another dominating weekend for the Lions. Penn State swept both Ball State and Ohio State, 3-0, in its final regular season matches of the season.
The Lions finished the season with a 25-3 record, having won their last 10 matches by the way of a 3-0 sweep.
Penn State once again controlled the match with its dominant service attack, tallying 20 service aces on the weekend. On the flip side, Ball State and Ohio State combined for seven service aces.
Leading the Lions was Price, who tallied seven aces, tied for the most of any Lion on the weekend. Price also chipped in 19 kills as Penn State cruised through the weekend set.
"Will Price's serving was awfully good this weekend," Pavlik said. "His attacking and his blocking and I thought he did a real nice job. If we can get that kind of play out of Will, where he can score those kind of points, couple that with our serving and we'll make teams have to play for the entire match against us."
Penn State also dissected its opponents with a balance that has taken over the offense in recent weeks. Against Ohio State, three Lions registered 13 kills as the team hit .500 for the match.
Pavlik credits this balance to Goas coming into his own as a setter and making crisp passes to his hitters.
"The passing has been giving him the opportunity to do that," Pavlik said. "We put the ball in his hands and he's going to put the ball in simple situations for our guys and they've responded really well."
Despite the roll that Penn State is on headed into the EIVA Tournament, Pavlik isn't ready to say his team is fully prepared to defend its national title just yet.
"To play national championship volleyball, you've got to develop the mindset that you've got to play one rally at a time, one contact at a time and some things showed me that we can do that, but I'm not quite sure we're there yet," Pavlik said. "I think we're pretty close, but I still think we've got some things we can do to sharpen our team."
