A fantastic history lesson from a literal lionsfan

Even today, people have blinders when it comes to Russ Rose. Obviously he's a great coach, but most of Penn State's early success came at the fact that they were one of the few reasonably successful programs in the east that talented players even wanted to go to and they essentially had a bye into the NCAA tournament for years because of the lack of competition. Penn State wasn't even relevant on the national stage until the 90's, almost a decade into Rose's tenure. Penn State didn't even reach a regional final until the 90's. It took Russ Rose years to get Penn State to anything close to what we now know the program to be.

ay giving us a revisionist history lesson on Penn State volleyball with a gross mischaracterization? Thanks, but no thanks. Do you even read what you write? This is tripe.

No Penn State fan thinks that "1980s Penn State" was close to the team it became decades later, nor that it was at the same tier of the 1980s big guns that were making Final Fours and winning titles. They were a step behind many, and sometimes underperformed. But you are severely misstating its competitiveness.

"Most of Penn State's early success came at the fact that they were one of the few reasonably successful programs in the east that talented players even wanted to go to”

Huh? What nonsensical mess is this? "Most of Penn State’s early successes came from the fact that they were successful because they were the only school in the east that could attract talented players"? So...yeah. They attracted (from your implication) "good for the East Coast" talent because they were a successful program. Whatever point you think you’re making here, you’re not.

"They essentially had a bye into the NCAA tournament for years because of the lack of competition."

So your implication here is that Penn State was lucky to be in a weak conference that enabled it to get a free pass into the tournament, because otherwise it wasn’t good enough to qualify because it couldn’t compete with the better teams of that era?

Let’s take a closer look at examples from the beginning, middle and end of the decade, shall we?

1981
In 1981 (where there were 20 teams, a year before it expanded to 28 after the last AIAW tourney), Penn State went 44-5 and lost 3-2 (10-15, 15-13, 15-10, 12-15, 13-15) in the regional semifinals to Pacific, who went to the Final Four that year.

Pacific had an easier time the next day against Cal Poly in the regional finals (winning 3-1: 15-12, 15-12, 8-15, 15-9). The Mustangs went 41-8 against almost exclusively West Coast competition that year.

P.S., 1981 Stanford had two losses to Pacific that year, and had a loss to Northwestern (a team Penn State beat in the regular season); the Card also lost to Cal Poly in the regular season.

Meanwhile, 1981 UCSB gets a draw that enables it to make a regional final in a year where it got swept twice by Pacific. Despite all the crowing you like to do about favorable Penn State tourney draws, you sure need to brush up on your history.

You know who else made the tournament in 1981? Pepperdine. That’s a California school, in case you weren’t sure. The Waves were 16-28 (!) that year. They lost in the first round. To a team from Texas (that wasn’t even the Longhorns!). So if you think some great West Coast team got cheated out of a tourney berth, they must have been worse than Pepperdine (yikes!).

Meanwhile, 13-16 (!) Arizona State was deemed so much better than the schools further away from California that they get a first-round bye, while 34-8 Purdue (who Penn State beat late in the season) had to play in the first round (which it won). The Sun Devils got spanked by Stanford in the regional semis (0-15, 10-15, 6-15...wow, they managed to score less points than Washington did against Penn State in 2013!), while Purdue battled Final Four team UCLA to five sets before losing (UCLA went on to beat Stanford in the Regional Final).

1984
In 1984, Penn State went 30-6 and beat Pacific 3-2 during the regular season. Pacific went to the Final Four again that year (beating Penn State along the way; the Lions beat the Big Ten champ Wildcats in the first round).

1986
In 1986 (tourney now expanded to 32 teams), Penn State went 38-5 and lost 3-2 (7-15, 15-4, 16-14, 16-18, 9-15) to Nebraska in the regional semi.

The Huskers made it to the NCAA title game that year, and neither Illinois (who lost 9-15, 8-15, 3-15...wow, less than the 2013 Huskies again!) nor Stanford (15-7, 2-15, 10-15, 10-15) played Nebraska that tough in the Regional Final/Final Four. Another bad draw for Penn State in the tourney!

1989
In 1989, Penn State went 34-7 and had two late 3-2 losses in the regular season on the road (15-12, 18-16, 10-15, 12-15, 13-15 and 12-15, 15-13, 4-15, 15-12, 13-15) at UT Arlington, who made the Final Four that year.

You need to look deeper before making such inaccurate generalizations.

"It took Russ Rose years (BOLD! ITALICS! UNDERLINED!) to get Penn State to anything close to what we now know the program to be."

What kind of a "Duh!" statement is this? (I'm dying that you went so far as to bold, italicize AND underline (!) a word to emphasize your wisdom. Was your ALL CAPS button broken? Stop embarrassing yourself!)

The NCAA tournament started in 1981. How many programs now (or at any time in their histories) are "anything close" to what we now know the Penn State program to be? Stanford, Nebraska and...? (If you take away a few natties and go back in time, UCLA/USC/Hawaii?)

And what’s vital to understand about 1980s Penn State is that these other teams had more funding. It wasn’t an even playing field. Said Rose of joining the Big Ten in 1991: "We went from partial scholarships to full scholarships and from a partial staff to a full staff."

And Lori Barberich: "When I played, we didn't have the full complement of scholarships, and we were always one player away” and noting that in the NCAAs “we were competing against teams with the full 12 scholarships. It was so frustrating."

So despite that disadvantage, Penn State was still competitive, and teams like Hawaii and Pacific—who had more scholarships to offer—were racking up more than half of the decade’s titles against smaller, less competitive fields than we see today. Ditto the other big programs of that era that racked up Regional Final/Final Four appearances (and a few with one-off 1980s titles) like UCLA, USC, Stanford, Nebraska and Texas. (Apparently by your assessment, Long Beach State wasn’t relevant until 1989, when it made its first Regional Final.)

So spare us the next time with your false narrative, okay?

Someone certainly has blinders on. It ain’t the PSU fans.

Sorry to interrupt the transfer portal tea...but I had to address this nonsense. Carry on!