Anyone who follows NCAA men's volleyball would agree that we are approaching the end of an extraordinary season, all across the country. On the West coast, the 2015 MPSF champion and NCAA semi-finalist UC Irvine had to depend on teams other than itself to clinch the final spot of the eight-team conference tournament which starts later this week. In MIVA, neither of the two teams which lived at the top of the AVCA poll last season and later gave us all quite a treat in the NCAA championship match – Lewis and Loyola – has featured in the top 10 of the same poll since Feb. 15, when the Ramblers, the defending champions, were ranked as No. 8. For the first time since 2012, a third team broke those teams' hegemony at the top of the conference standings. You'd have to look an additional year back when a third team claimed the top seed in the MIVA tournament like Ohio State did this season…after five long years.

EIVA, the conference in which Mason competes, has not been any different. The fact that 24-time defending champion Penn State lost a conference match at home for the first time since 1998 tells you enough about how wild it has been in the East in 2016. In addition, after uniting the Hay Division and the Tait Division into one, which reduced the number of EIVA tournament participants to four, the same four teams have made postseason: Penn State, Harvard, Princeton, and Mason. Going into the final weekend of the 2016 regular season, the young Tigers have long dropped out of the tournament race, only a miracle would pull out Saint Francis out of the top four, and NJIT is still pushing for its first postseason appearance since 2008. This means that as of Sunday morning, we could have only two of the 2015 EIVA Championship participants with tickets punched for the 2016 edition. It's been that kind of season…

If it was any other season, I – and many of the players in the Mason MVB locker room, for that matter – would have tunnel vision on the Penn State match on Saturday, before the first whistle in the Saint Francis match has even been blown. Yes, it would be quite a story to rub the nose of EIVA's big dog in Paco Velez and Dom Edgley's final match in the RAC. Trust me, I would love to write that one! However, one of the fundamentals in coach Jay Hosack's philosophy, which he has deeply engrained in the program's culture, is respect for the opponent, EVERY opponent. Needless to say, with the year that they have been having, the No. 15 Red Flash does deserve respect. In fact, the team that started last season 0-11 was the team that came back from a set down to knock off No. 6 Penn State in Rec Hall on March 18. In addition, the Red Flash has decorated its RPI resume with wins over BOTH of last year's national championship finalists. As if that is not impressive enough, the win against Lewis came away from home early in the season, when the Flyers were ranked second-best in the country in the coaches' poll. As a result of Saint Francis' stellar year, seven Red Flash players have earned 10 EIVA weekly honors this season, which speaks highly of the balance in head coach Mike Rumbaugh's team. Back in January, junior opposite hitter Jeff Hogan won both the Offensive Player of the Week and the Defensive Player of the Week honors, in the SAME week.

The aforementioned blurb on Saint Francis' impressive season makes me do something previously unthinkable, in other words a perfect fit for the 2016 men's volleyball season – I am calling this weekend the Saint Francis Weekend, as opposed to the usual Penn State Weekend! This is so because if Mason loses tonight's match to the Red Flash, given that all other contests on Saturday start at 4 p.m., the Patriots' #RoadToEIVA may be cut short even before first serve against the Nittany Lions at 7 p.m.  I would much rather have current and former Mason Volleyball members and fans laugh at me for overrating Saint Francis if Mason happens to continue its three-match sweep streak against the Red Flash rather than have them feel stunned if one of the two EIVA teams that lost 3-0 at the RAC last season discontinues the Patriots' winning streak.

So, tonight is not another pre-Penn State match against some team that hasn't made postseason since 2011. Instead, it is a match against a nationally ranked opponent and another opportunity for the Patriots to rise to the occasion and continue Mason's postseason tradition. It is time for #BigBoyVolleyball!