Pitt head volleyball coach Chris Beerman is confident his team is ready for conference play. A… Pitt head volleyball coach Chris Beerman is confident his team is ready for conference play. A tough, 13-game, non-conference schedule has provided his team with what he hopes is the experience they need to be prepared for a Big East conference that’s as tough as ever.

“We’ve played a tough schedule so far,” Beerman said about Pitt’s non-conference opponents. “Traditionally, we have five or six losses coming into Big East play. I just want us to keep getting better. This conference is the toughest one around. It’s dog-eat-dog.”

The dogs will be let out Saturday at 2 p.m. when Pitt hosts Villanova at the Fitzgerald Field House in its first conference match of the season. The Panthers will also play host to Rutgers the following day in another 2 p.m. match.

Pitt (7-6) has had several players reach new heights on the court. The team has also experienced lows, though: losing close matches, making costly, mental errors and falling too far behind too early. The Panthers, however, have used these mistakes as learning tools.

“Our blocking and our serving are better than prior teams’ have ever been at this point,” Beerman said. “We’ve been working on them a lot.”

In conference matches, every play will count. Every missed serve, mishandled ball, every mental mistake will come back to haunt Pitt. But Beerman is confident that even the freshmen are ready.

“Our freshmen are getting better all the time. They’re more confident. And when they’re more confident, the team as a whole is more confident. It’s really working out well,” he said.

The Wildcats will be Pitt’s first test. Villanova is coming off one of its best starts in school history, winning its first 10 matches of the season. Preseason polls had ranked the team No. 12 out of 15 in the conference, but a strong start is proving such polls wrong.

Before losing three games in a row last weekend, Villanova was one of three undefeated teams in the Big East. No other conference could claim three teams with perfect records, proving the amount of talent the teams in Pitt’s conference have.

Villanova traditionally struggles against Pitt, however, owning a dismal, all-time 4-27 record against the Panthers. The Wildcats haven’t lost to any team more than the Panthers and haven’t beaten Pitt since 1998.

“They’re definitely a better team than last year,” Beerman said about Villanova’s 10 wins so far this season. “But their schedule wasn’t stronger until the last three games, which they lost. They have a nice group of talent, though, and will bring a lot of confidence on Saturday.”

The Panthers have focused on two key players who are new to the Wildcats this season. Dana Tartazky, a 6-foot-1 freshman outside hitter, traveled all the way from Israel to play at Villanova and starting setter Jenna Link came to the Wildcats as a transfer from the University of Alabama. Both players have been key to their team’s success thus far and will be factors in the outcome of the game against Pitt.

Not to be overlooked is Rutgers, who, a year ago, upset Pitt 3-2, ruining the Panther’s undefeated Big East record. Pitt will be favored in the game, but that isn’t always a good thing according to Beerman.

“[A match is] the hardest thing when you’re favored,” Beerman explained, and Rutgers plans to make sure things are even harder for Pitt.

The Scarlet Knights, like Villanova, are proving to be better than their preseason ranking. Slotted dead last in the Big East, they’ve worked their way up to No. 12 with a 5-8 record so far.

Lara Yankauskas, a junior outside hitter, has been a big part of that success. Last year, she compiled the fifth-best kills-per-game average (3.86) in the Big East, and poses the biggest offensive threat to the Panthers on Sunday.

The Panthers’ opponents this weekend may not be Louisville or Notre Dame, the toughest in the conference, but both Beerman and Pitt know not to take any conference game lightly. No opponent is easy and no game is for sure.

As Beerman said, “This is the Big East. Every team is good.”