Riding a four-game winning streak, the No. 7 Stanford men’s volleyball team heads south this weekend for its last action before a break for final exams. Awaiting the Cardinal tonight is one of its toughest Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) opponents, No. 4 Long Beach State, with UC-San Diego on deck tomorrow.

The Cardinal (13-6, 8-6 MPSF) has moved up in the conference and national standings with its current streak. Stanford followed a sweep of then-undefeated No. 2 Brigham Young with two midweek wins over Hawaii last week, one in five games and one in three. The team then capped the successful week with a dominant sweep of UC-Santa Cruz on Saturday night.

“We are for the most part healthy and we are using the momentum to just keep getting better,” head coach John Kosty said. “That has been our main goal throughout the season — to keep getting better, executing better and siding out at a higher percentage.”

The four wins mark the Cardinal’s longest winning streak of the season, and the team seems to be hitting its stride with seven matches remaining on its schedule before the MPSF Tournament takes place in mid-April.

Sophomore opposite Evan Romero won Stanford’s second straight Co-MPSF Player of the Week honor — following freshman outside hitter Spencer McLachlin a week ago — and was also tabbed National Player of the Week for his performance in a pair of wins over Hawaii.

In the two matches, Romero tallied 49 kills and hit nearly .700 in last Thursday’s sweep of the Rainbow Warriors. He leads Stanford on the season with 296 kills, at a pace of nearly 4.5 per game, which ranks him in the top 10 nationwide.

Romero is tied with junior middle blocker Brandon Williams as the team’s top servers, with sophomore Kawika Shoji leading the way in assists and digs and Williams anchoring the Cardinal’s blocking corps.

The 49ers (14-2, 10-2) opened their 2008 campaign with nine straight wins before losing to No. 5 Pepperdine. They have lost only once since, to No. 3 Cal State Northridge.

On Wednesday, Long Beach State swept past Pacific in three games, behind 12 kills at a .526 clip by senior Paul Lotman.

“They have two players, Paul Lotman and Dean Bittner, who I believe are both in the top three in kills per game in the country,” Kosty said of the 49ers. “They are a force to be reckoned with and that is why they are ranked where they are.

“They are talented attackers and we are not going to stop them, but we need to control them and give ourselves point-scoring opportunities. If we can do that, I think we have a good shot at winning that match.”

Lotman is the top attacker for the 49ers — and in the nation — with 318 kills on the season and a team-high 33 aces in only 16 matches. Dean Bittner and Dan Alexander support Lotman on offense and Alexander is also the team’s top blocker with 95, an average of 1.7 per game.

Tomorrow night the Cardinal will visit UC-San Diego, the team on the losing end of two of Stanford’s three wins last year. At 5-13 overall and 2-11 in the MPSF, the Tritons are again near the bottom of the conference standings. They did, however, sweep conference foe No. 12 UC-Santa Barbara last week and upset No. 6 UC-Irvine in January.

“In their match last weekend against UCSB, they had three players hit over .500,” Kosty said. “So their record does not indicate how good a team they are. They are a talented team and I expect them to win some more this year. That’s just where the MPSF is right now, where even [against] a team with two wins in conference, you have got to come to play.

Jason Spangler and Frank Fritsch lead the Triton offense while Gerald Houseman is the top blocker. Libero Eric Leserman leads the UCSD digging effort.

Several challenges await the Cardinal after this weekend, not the least of which is final exams. These will be the last matches Stanford plays until March 29, when the team will visit No. 5 Pepperdine and No. 8 Southern California. But it does not get much easier from there, with rematches against UCSD and Long Beach followed by No. 10 UCLA and No. 6 UC-Irvine to close out the regular season.

“It helps us, there is no doubt about that,” Kosty said of the two-week break. “It is a very long season and it is a good time for us to reenergize mentally and physically. We can take care of aches and pains and come back strong.

“We have a big weekend at the end of spring break at Pepperdine and USC. That will definitely be in the back of our minds. We have motivation, but we need a break to rest and heal.”