Bungee Jumping with the Nittany Lions

In recent weeks, watching the Penn State Women’s Volleyball team has felt a bit like watching a good friend bungee jumping over, and over, and over again: you believe that cord will hold; everyone says it’s safe; but somehow, seeing the rope stretch to the limit, snapping back just before your friend hits the ground, leaves you more than a little queasy. Sort of like this:

That’s the feeling we had as Penn State squeaked by Michigan Friday night, 3-2 (24-26, 25-8, 23-25, 25-21, 15-12) at a sold-out Cliff Kean Arena. For the Game Tracker final, Click Here, and for Final Match Statistics, Click Here.

For Penn State fans who think 2009 is 2008 +1, Friday night’s match was yet another reminder that it isn’t: this year’s Penn State team is not invincible (OK, the 2008 team wasn’t either — it lost two sets). But when the match was on the line, the Nittany Lions came through, snapping back just before they hit the ground.

On Breaking Records

So Penn State’s winning streak goes on — 83 consecutive match victories and counting. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra “it’s gonna live till it dies”

By the way, the record for consecutive wins by a college sports team is not held by the UCLA men’s basketball team, and is not 88. Somehow that misinformation entered the media (it was cited by the Big Ten Network commentators during last Sunday’s PSU-Minnesota match), and has been repeated frequently (perhaps even by us). As pointed out in this thread on PennStateHoops.com, the record for consecutive wins is the 92 straight wins by the University of North Carolina women’s soccer team from 1990-94 (UNC also has unbeaten streaks of 101 and 103 games).