With a break from Mountain Pacific Sports Federation competition, the Stanford men’s volleyball team is leaving the mountains and Pacific behind this weekend and heading east.

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Men's Volleyball will take to the road in Indiana, looking for its first win of the season. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/6756
John Laxson

Men's Volleyball will take to the road in Indiana, looking for its first win of the season.

The Cardinal (0-7, 0-4 MPSF) will face sub-freezing temperatures and a Top Ten team when it plays a pair of non-conference matches at No. 7 Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne on Friday and Saturday nights.

The Mastodons (4-0, 1-0 Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) are the next in a string of ranked opponents that Stanford has played and will continue to face throughout the conference season. The Cardinal dropped a pair to No. 2 BYU last weekend and will take on No. 12 Pacific next week.

The trip to Indiana will be a change of scenery for the players who have not yet played outside California. In fact, Stanford has only one other trip outside the state on its schedule, a weekend in Hawaii in April.

“It’s a hostile environment, cold weather — which some of our guys are not used to — and it’s just different,” head coach John Kosty said. “For the future of this program these are definitely trips we need to take.”

The trip will also give the Cardinal an opportunity to see unfamiliar competition and get outside the MPSF, which can help both Stanford and the conference as a whole.

“First, it gives us the opportunity to travel, be on the road, be in a different, hostile environment, and then it doesn’t count in league,” Kosty said. “It will count in the overall picture for going to the NCAA Championships, but it doesn’t count in our league.

“Secondly, heading into the national championships, these are matches that the MPSF needs to win,” he continued. “It gives us, as a league, the ability to put more teams into the national championship. So it is key for us to come out with a couple of wins.”

IPFW, also known as “Arnie’s Army” for head coach Arnie Ball, are unfamiliar opponents for the Cardinal and, unlike most match-ups, the coaches do not have film to help prepare their teams. Although scouting generally plays a big role in the lead-up to a match, Kosty is happy with the opportunity to focus the team’s attention on their own side of the net.

“The team we have right now is a young team, so I like just thinking about us,” he said. “From statistics and the good old Internet, there are ways to pick up some tendencies, find out who is starting. We understand the team make-up, we just haven’t seen them in person. So it’s more knowing just a little bit about their team and really trying to correct the things that have led to our errors in recent matches.”

The Mastodons have not lost in their first four matches of the season and swept all but one opponent. Last weekend, they needed five games to get past No. 13 Loyola-Chicago to maintain their perfect record.

Outside hitter CJ Macias was the National Player of the Week after the Mastodons’ opening weekend and spearheads the IPFW attack, with 83 kills, more than twice as many as any other player. Macias is a threat from the whole court; he leads his team in digs and is second in blocks. Josh Stewart leads the blocking defense and is second on the team in kills, tied with Josh Collins who has 32 kills and a hitting percentage of over .500.

The Cardinal has been led by junior outside hitter Matt Ceran and freshman right side Evan Romero. Ceran has a team-high 99 kills, and Romero has 92. Freshman middle blocker Garrett Werner leads the Cardinal with 17 total blocks while senior libero Brian Lindberg has amassed 33 digs.

Junior outside hitter Jesse Meredith was one of the offensive leaders until he injured his ankle in the fifth match of the season. Junior Brian Skinner has taken his place in the lineup and will most likely see plenty of action against the Mastodons.

“[Skinner] played well last week and it looks like [he will start],” Kosty said. “We’ve got 12 guys who can really help our team, so it’s not a situation of starters. It’s who is playing well and, if somebody isn’t playing well, I have full confidence in our bench being able to come in and step up and improve the match.”