Lions struggling to find marquee matchups

Just looking at that Penn State schedule, you have to shake your head and wonder.

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It all starts with a team from Ohio, a few weeks later it’s Temple, and the marquee contests are against Big Ten teams.

Are we talking football? No — volleyball. At least this Nittany Lion team will play Pittsburgh.

The Penn State women’s volleyball schedule was posted last week, and despite being two-time defending national champions, the slate is hardly impressive.

The only non-conference teams that made last year’s NCAA tournament are Miami (Ohio), Saint Louis and Duke, and they are all on the road.

If you are disappointed in the schedule, you are not alone.

“I tried very hard to get a number of people to play, talked to a number of teams in the top 10, and there were some people that didn’t want to play us home or away,” head coach Russ Rose said. “And there were some that didn’t want to come and play us. Scheduling is not as easy as maybe people think it is.”

The trips for tournaments in Saint Louis (where they also will play Miami and Alabama) and at Duke (which also includes Loyola, Md., and College of Charleston) are both pay-back matches for each coming to State College in recent seasons. The trip to Durham is also for senior Megan Hodge and sophomore Katie Kabbes, who are from that area.

The reciprocity is a bit of a burning issue for Rose, who thought he had Nebraska on the home schedule this season.

“Circumstances led to that not coming to fruition,” Rose said, not elaborating other than saying, “they didn’t want to come.”

While he did not say it outright, his frustration is quite evident with the Cornhuskers, who were the only team to take a set off the Nittany Lions last season — in the NCAA semifinals. Penn State has played in Lincoln 12 times, with four other matches on neutral floors (if last year’s match in Omaha could have been considered neutral), and the Huskers have been to State College once.

“We honor our commitments and it would be nice if everybody did,” said Rose, whose team was invited to other tournaments with higher ranked teams on the same weekends as the two trips. One of them was not this year’s AVCA Showcase, which is hosted by the Huskers in Omaha. The tournament has in the past included the defending national champion, but this year features Michigan, Minnesota and Kansas State.

Rose also said some ranked teams — he declined to name names — sent out a notice they were looking for someone to play, and he told them he had an opening at home. There were no takers. Instead, Penn State plays at Temple on Sept. 18, then hosts St. Francis and the Owls on the 19th.

Maybe Penn State could have played in better events on those road weekends, but it does not seem the top teams are interested in ending the Lions’ 64-match win streak. Is the prospect of playing in Rec Hall, and traveling to State College, really that bad?

Also, the team’s first home tournament, Sept. 4-5, features Buffalo, Robert Morris and Pittsburgh. Those three combined to be 40-45 last season, though the number is dragged down by Buffalo’s 6-25 mark.

While some teams, especially Duke, are pretty good, it is disappointing the Nittany Lions will not face a top-10 test until the Big Ten season comes around.

No award for Fawcett

Last year’s women’s AVCA Player of the Year, Nicole Fawcett, was one of five finalists for the Honda Broderick Cup, given annually to the nation’s athlete of the year in all sports. She did not add another piece of hardware to her extensive collection, however. It was won by gymnast Courtney Kupets, a multi-medalist in the 2004 Athens Olympics, who came back from a torn Achilles’ tendon to win the NCAA all-around title, three individual apparatus titles and help Georgia to the team crown.

More All-Americans

The AVCA has only given out boys’ high school All- America honors for three years, but this year’s team features three Penn State men’s recruits — middle blocker Ian Hendries of Carlsbad, Calif.; outside hitter Nick Turko of Lewisberry; and opposite Tom Comfort of Orchard Park, N.Y. Hendries and Turko are first-team picks and Comfort is a second-teamer.

Still making a difference

In this column a couple months ago, the story was told of several Penn State athletes who were involved in the Soccer Without Borders program helping young girls in Grenada, Nicaragua. An e-mail update came last week from one of those players, recent graduate Kaleen Adami. She and ex-Nittany Lion Zoe Bouchelle have signed on to be the organization’s first long-term interns in Nicaragua. They start their work in September for nine months in Central America.

Gordon Brunskill is a sports writer for the Centre Daily Times. He can be reached at 231-4608 or gbrunski@centredaily.com.