UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (September 17, 2011) – Playing in a tough environment on the road, Rutgers University volleyball fell in three sets to No. 5 Penn State on Saturday morning at Rec Hall. The Nittany Lions have won the last four NCAA National Championships and 97 of the last 98 matches at home.

Even with the loss, Rutgers head coach CJ Werneke saw a lot of positives in the match as he continues to build the program in preparation for the start of BIG EAST play next week.

“I thought that we saw some great things out there and we were able to put some pressure on them at times,” he said after the match. “We were able to execute our serve-receive at a higher level, and if we can do that against a team like Penn State it should give us confidence to do that against teams in our conference.”

Sophomore Tiffany Regmund (Bryan, Texas) led the Scarlet Knights (6-9) with eight kills in the match, while junior setter Stephanie Zielinski (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) recorded 21 assists and seven digs.

The Nittany Lions (6-3) are the highest-ranked team on Rutgers’ schedule, which gave the Scarlet Knights a good test to get ready for the pace of conference matches.

“I think it gets us ready for the speed of the BIG EAST and it allows us to understand that we can be a pretty good team when we focus on the details,” said Werneke. “I think we did a better job of that this morning.”

Rutgers will play its final match of the Hampton Inn Classic at 4 p.m. today against Long Island (3-8). The match can be followed through GameTracker. Click here for the tournament central homepage.