Penn State women's volleyball weekly preview

Starting off the week, the 6-3 Nittany Lions take on the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, at home. The Scarlet Knights are 8-2 on the year so far with losses only to NC State and Princeton.

When it comes to the landscape of the Big Ten, there have not yet been any conference games, meaning both squads will be making their in-conference debuts at this upcoming matchup. Rutgers is sitting above Penn State in the Big Ten rankings currently fourth in the Big Ten and Penn State is seventh.

Jess Mruzik has been lights out this season with 148.5 points already this year and is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. Her 152 kills leads the team in which Allie Holland who is second on the team is not even halfway to Mruzik’s mark.

Coming off of Camryn Hannah having the 1,000th kill of her career, Penn State has heaps of momentum behind them to boost them into Big Ten play.

Looking over to New Brunswick, Alissa Kinkela is going on a tear of her own with 146 points on the season. Along with that, Kinkela has tallied up 118 kills both of which lead the team. Offensively, there are about five to six strong offensive players for the Scarlet Knights, all fully capable of making the Nittany Lions’ stout defense struggle.

The key to this game on both sides of the court is to get their stars involved very early and often because whichever star (Mruzik and Kinkela) has the stronger game will get their team the win.

Looking over to Sunday, Northwestern is sitting at tenth in the Big Ten with a 6-4 record so far this season. They will be hosting the Nittany Lions in Evanston looking to start their Big Ten play as far from .500 as possible.

Leilani Dodson, Julia Sangiacomo and Maddy Chinn all have tallied over 100 points already this season with Kathryn Randorf nearing 100 with only 6.5 points to go to hit that mark. After those four, the offense does not really have anyone else who stands out on that offense.

Looking towards the Penn State defense, Gillian Grimes, the libero and defensive specialist, leads the team in digs and forces the opposing offense to work through her. Holland as well as Taylor Trammell lead the team in blocks with 45 and 40 respectively on the year.

When it comes to service errors, both teams put up similar errors with Penn State at 70 and Northwestern at 68 so far. Service errors are a detrimental aspect of the game for an offense that can disrupt all momentum.

This game is going to be all about runs and which team can get hot down the stretch to play their style of volleyball longer than their opponent.

Joey David is a fourth-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, please email jtd5508@psu.edu.