The Penn State men’s volleyball team had been dominant for most of 2022, with a top-five national ranking and an unblemished record in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association.
The Nittany Lions’ national championship dreams were dashed, however, with a loss to Princeton in their conference tournament semifinals, and in the end they didn’t even make the NCAA’s National Collegiate Championship Tournament.
Penn State (24-3, 10-0 EIVA) is quite possibly even better this year, and the No. 3 Nittany Lions now have something to prove to be sure their dreams aren’t dashed two years in a row.
Penn State is hosting the EIVA Championship Tournament April 19-22 at Rec Hall. The No. 3 Nittany Lions will face either Harvard or George Mason at 7 p.m. April 20 in the semifinals. The championship match is set for 7 p.m. April 22. The NCAA finals are May 6 at George Mason in Fairfax, Virginia.
Penn State hasn’t lost a regular-season conference match since April 3, 2021, at George Mason, has only two EIVA losses over the past four seasons, and only lost one set in a conference match this year. They also have a 7-3 record against ranked opponents this season, including wins against No. 1 and defending national champion Hawaii, No. 2 UCLA, No. 5 UC-Irvine, No. 8 Stanford and No. 9 Pepperdine.
The Nittany Lions also have started collecting hardware. For the second straight season and third time in program history, the Nittany Lions have seven student-athletes honored as All-EIVA, as determined by a vote of conference coaches. Penn State, which also had seven All-EIVA picks during its 2009 national championship season, has six players among the 10 on the All-EIVA first team, and added one more second-team selection.
Penn State’s group was led by two-time Uvaldo Acosta Memorial Player of the Year setter Cole Bogner, named to the list for a fourth time, and EIVA Freshman of the Year libero Ryan Merk. Bogner wins the conference’s top individual honor for a second time to go with his award in 2021, and was a unanimous choice by the conference coaches. He is the fourth straight Nittany Lion to win or share the honor, is the 22nd Player of the Year winner from Penn State and joins Jose Quinnones (2000-02) as Penn State setters to win the honor.
Bogner was a second-team AVCA All-American in 2021 and 2022, is an All-EIVA first-team selection for a third straight year, has posted 1,009 assists this season and has 3,984 for his career. His 10.30 assists per set leads the EIVA and ranks fifth nationally, and he has guided the Nittany Lion offense to .335 hitting efficiency this season, which leads the EIVA and is sixth in the nation.
