Serving off at 5p at Memorial Colesium in Lexington, KY, the No. 8 seeded Penn State women's volleyball team will take on the No. 9 seeded UCLA Bruins in a tough match for a young team. The match can be "seen" on ESPN3.com.

The Nittany Lions cruised through Liberty and Delaware in straight sets to make it to the regional semi-finals, and now face their first challenge on the quest for a five-peat. UCLA dropped UMES (Maryland-East Shore) in straight sets, but dropped a set before finishing off San Diego last weekend.

The other regional matchup pits top-ranked Texas against the hometown Kentucky Wildcats, and will take place shortly after the PSU-UCLA match ends. Stats, players, and some quality DigNittanyVolleyball analysis after the jump.

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Last night was Selection Sunday for the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship tournament, which will culminate with the Final Four in San Antone (last time I went through I took three broads home), and the ladies of Penn State are sitting in a nice position with a regional No. 2 seed.

Slightly different from the men's basketball version, only the top 16 teams in the country are ranked, as opposed to the 16 teams within each region being assigned a seed. Penn State enters the tournament as the eighth-ranked team in the country, and will face off against Big South champion Liberty on Friday night at 7:00 pm at Rec Hall. Should the Lions win that match, they will face the winner of the Delaware/American matchup on Saturday at 7:30 pm at Rec Hall.

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Just a little over halfway through the conference schedule, the women's volleyball team is ranked 6th in the most recent AVCA poll (along with fellow Big Ten teams Nebraska (2), Illinois (5), Purdue (11), Minnesota (15), Ohio State (22) and Michigan (23)). On the heels of a huge victory over Nebraska and with some very important conference matchups looming, it's time to check in once again with the incomparable Dig Nittany Volleyball.

Black Shoe Diaries: The women's volleyball team has had somewhat of a roller coaster season, despite their Top Ten ranking. They struggled early in preseason tournament play, but are now looking really good, coming off a victory over Nebraska. What are your reflections over the first half of Big Ten play?

Dig Nittany Volleyball: Thoughts on the season to date? Comparing this team's performance against Nebraska last Saturday to its performance opening night in a 3-1 loss to Oregon (which, as it turns out, is a very solid team), I'm very impressed by the coaching job of Russ Rose and his staff. Deja McClendon and Ariel Scott have put together five matches where both of them have put in at least solid, if not  spectacular, offensive numbers. That’s a big improvement over many of the early matches, in which one or the other would show up, but rarely both.

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Football finally returns to our lives in 10 shorts days (well, eight really), but another wildly popular Penn State team is set to return to action in just two days. The four-time defending national champion Penn State Women's Volleyball team will play host to the Rockvale Outlets/AVCA Showcase this weekend, welcoming Minnesota, USC, and Oregon to Rec Hall. The No. 1 ranked Lions will face Oregon on Friday night and USC on Saturday, avoiding the No. 12 ranked Golden Gophers due to league rules (the two will face each other October 1 and again November 4). Both matches will be broadcast live on BTN.

Before league play opens in late September, the Lions will take place in three other tournaments, literally traveling across the country to play the nation's best teams. On September 2nd and 3rd, the Lions will be in Pittsburgh for the University of Pittsburgh Tournament, facing Miami (OH), Pitt, and New Hampshire over two days. A week later, the team will head to Palo Alto to play in a much-hyped Nike Big Four Tournament featuring Stanford, Florida and Texas, a tournament where every team is a preseason Top 10 team. Finally, the Lions will return home to face LIU and Florida Gulf Coast in the Penn State Classic September 16 and 17.

A look at the team and the rest of the season after the jump.

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In case you missed it, the men's volleyball team won the EIVA for the 13th consecutive time last week, beating Springfield in the championship game to earn a spot in the NCAA Final Four, which begins tonight at Rec Hall. Penn State will take on Ohio State in the second game at roughly 9:00 P.M. with a spot in the NCAA title game on the line. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com

The Nittany Lions split their two regular season matchups with the Buckeyes, falling 3-0 in Columbus on Feb. 9 before earning a 3-1 victory against their rivals on April 10.

The men's volleyball rivalry between these two schools as every bit as heated as the football one if not more so. Since, Ohio State has been one of the few teams over the years to prove it can hang with Penn State, the animosity has obviously grown over time and with so much on the line this evening, you can bet it will be a heated contest.

Use this as your open thread to discuss the action and check back later this evening for a recap.

As the Penn State women's volleyball team was in the process of winning its fourth consecutive national championship Saturday evening in a 3-0 rout of Cal at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, ESPN continually ran teasers of the UCONN women's basketball team's pursuit of the UCLA men's basketball's record streak of 88 consecutive wins.

Been there, done that.

With the victory tonight, Penn State has bigger UCLA marks in its sights. Try its seven consecutive national championships from 1967-1973.

That's the number of titles Penn State will have if this season's stellar freshman class that includes budding stars like Deja McClendon, who had 16 kills in the title match, and Katie Slay, who led Penn State with 6 blocks and the championship clinching kill, win out for their careers as seniors Blair Brown, Arielle Wilson and Alyssa D'Errico did Saturday night.

We've exhausted just about every adjective to describe this team. It's been an incredible ride through history with these fine young women, past and present, and it doesn't look like it'll be ending any time soon.

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Penn State volleyball takes on Cal tonight in the NCAA National Championship game. The Nittany Lions will be looking for their fourth straight title after a big win over Texas in the Final Four the other night. Penn State has ended Cal's season each of the last three years, but this year's Golden Bears squad has fought through and made it all the way to the championship game and might be the best Cal teams Penn State has played yet. For a preview of what we might see on the other side of the net tonight, here's a Q and A with Avinash from California Golden Blogs. He helps us break down this Cal team and prepare for the big game.

We'll have an open thread later tonight, so stay tuned for that. The game is on ESPN2 at 8:30 p.m.

1. How does this team compare to the previous Cal tournament teams?

This is a more complete squad than the previous Golden Bears teams that've played in the NCAA tournament. They're simply solid in all facets of the game. They have great inside hitting and outside hitting. They dig well when they have to and and block well too. Setter Carli Lloyd sets the tone with her strong passing, a decent kill shot, and good sense of who to pass to at all times, and the young hitters are making their presence felt. It's a surprising run (I don't think we were even predicted to finish in the top 2 of the Pac-10, much less win it all), but the senior leadership of Lloyd seems to be the steadying factor in bringing them this far.

Oh, plus there's the answer to #2.

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For Penn State and Texas on Thursday night, it was supposed to be another classic. Russ Rose's squad had another plan, though.

The Nittany Lions dominated the Longhorns in a 3-0 sweep ( 25-13, 25-13, 25-22) of their national semifinal match Thursday night at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Penn State will face the winner of California vs. USC on Saturday night for its fourth straight national championship.

Penn State's young players came up huge against Texas in their first Final Four match. Freshman Deja McClendon had 11 kills on a dominating .733 kill percentage. Fellow frosh Katie Slay led the Lions with six blocks and sophomore setter Kristin Carpenter had 38 assists. Freshman Ariel Scott added 1o kills.

The upperclassmen had a big game, too, though. Senior Blair Brown led the Lions with 12 kills and senior Arielle WIlson chipped in 6 kills on a solid .462 hitting.

Man, did this team look good tonight. Texas paid for nearly every error, and save for the first few points coming out of the locker room for the third set, Penn State played perhaps as dominant as it has all season. As the commentators on the broadcast noted, it was the first time on the big stage for a lot of Penn State's underclassmen, but they shined for Penn State tonight. Another effort like this, and the Lions will be well on their way to a fourth straight national title.