Penn State Men Will Play 3 of 5 NCAA Tournament Teams in 2018

  0 Braden Keith | October 11th, 2017 | College - Men's Indoor, EIVA, News

The Penn State men’s volleyball team has announced their 2017-2018 season schedule. This year’s slate will include an early trip to Los Angeles for the Pac 12/Big Ten Challenge, where they’ll play UCLA and USC (even though neither the Big Ten nor the Pac 12 sponsor men’s volleyball as a sport). That will give Penn State a preview of the Pauley Pavilion, which is the host of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championship Tournament.

That’s one of just two trips out of the eastern time zone for Penn State this season. The other will be an early March trip to the Outrigger Invitational, where they’ll play BYU, Hawaii, and Lewis University. While the easiest path to the NCAA tournament for Penn State is to win their conference, the EIVA, they’ll otherwise build an impressive resume that should they stumble through an always-competitive conference schedule, there are enough non-conference wins to be had to build a strong at-large case.

Case-in-point: Penn state, who made the NCAA tournament last year and lost in the opening round to Hawaii, will play 3 of the 5 other NCAA tournament teams from last season in 2018: Ohio State, Hawaii and BYU. They also play Lewis University, last year’s MIVA runners-up.

The team’s schedule will have a new wrinkle this year, as the Nittany Lions will have a full 12-day stretch without games from March 18th-30th. Head coach Mark Pavlik says that this was a conscious decision.

“One thing we’ve found over the course of the last couple of years is that we can’t just keep asking them to keep pounding away. I think there’s a break that serves us very well, so we’re going to take that and then hit the last 3 weeks of the EIVA season.”

Penn State returns most of their roster from last season, having lost only two players to graduation. One of those is the team’s second-leading scorer from 2017 Chris Nugent, who averaged 3.18 kills/set and 3.65 points/set; and middle blocker Matt Callaway who had 108 total blocks and hit .406 out of the Nittany Lions’ central offense last year.. They do return leading scorer Calvin Mende at the opposite, as well as their top defensive blocker Kevin Gear (119 last season) for their 2018 run. Mende spent the summer as part of the 2017 Men’s Junior National Training Team.

The team’s full 2017-2018 schedule is below:

2017-2018 SCHEDULE
Date Opponent / Event Location Time / Result Media
Sat., Jan. 6 Penn State Alumni Match University Park, Pa. 3:00 p.m. ET
Fri., Jan. 12 vs.Mount Olive Mount Olive University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Jan. 13 vs.Alderson-Broaddus Alderson-Broaddus University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Pac 12/Big Ten Challenge
Fri., Jan. 19 atUCLA UCLA Los Angeles, Calif. 10:30 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Jan. 20 vs.USC USC Los Angeles, Calif. 2:30 p.m. ET MORE
Sun., Jan. 28 atOhio State Ohio State Columbus, Ohio 2:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Feb. 2 vs.Ball State Ball State University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Feb. 3 vs.Fort Wayne Fort Wayne University Park, Pa. 4:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Feb. 10 atSaint Francis (PA) Saint Francis (PA) * Loretto, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Feb. 16 vs.Harvard Harvard * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Feb. 17 vs.Sacred Heart Sacred Heart * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Feb. 23 vs.George Mason George Mason * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Feb. 24 vs.Charleston (WV) Charleston (WV) * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Mar. 2 atNJIT NJIT * Newark, N.J. 4:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Mar. 3 atPrinceton Princeton * Princeton, N.J. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Outrigger Invitational
Thu., Mar. 8 vs.BYU BYU Honolulu, Hawai’i 9:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Mar. 9 atHawai'i Hawai’i Honolulu, Hawai’i 11:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Mar. 10 vs.Lewis Lewis Honolulu, Hawai’i 9:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Mar. 16 vs.Ohio State Ohio State University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sun., Mar. 18 vs.Saint Francis (PA) Saint Francis (PA) * University Park, Pa. 4:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Mar. 30 atSacred Heart Sacred Heart * Fairfield, Conn. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Mar. 31 atHarvard Harvard * Cambridge, Mass. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Apr. 6 atCharleston (WV) Charleston (WV) * Charleston, WV 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Apr. 7 atGeorge Mason George Mason * Fairfax, Va. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Fri., Apr. 13 vs.Princeton Princeton * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
Sat., Apr. 14 vs.NJIT NJIT * University Park, Pa. 7:00 p.m. ET MORE
EIVA Tournament
Thu., Apr. 19 EIVA Semifinal TBD TBA MORE
Sat., Apr. 21 EIVA Championship TBD TBA MORE
NCAA Championships
Fri., Apr. 27 NCAA Play-In TBD All Day MORE
Tue., May 1 NCAA Quarterfinal Los Angeles, Calif. All Day MORE
Thu., May 3 NCAA Semifinal Los Angeles, Calif. All Day MORE
Sat., May 5 NCAA Championship Los Angeles, Calif. All Day MORE

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About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of VolleyMob.com. Braden's first foray into sports journalism came in 2010, when he launched a swimming website called The Swimmers' Circle. Two years later, he joined SwimSwam.com as a co-founder. Long huge fans of volleyball, when Braden and the SwimSwam partners sought an opportunity to …

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