One week after going relatively unchallenged at their own tournament, Missouri will head west for a potentially-difficult slate at the Pepperdine Ascics Classic in Malibu, Calif.

Friday’s opener against Eastern Washington may not be a stiff challenge for Missouri, but the Tigers’ two Saturday matches will be good tests.

Missouri will kick off a Saturday doubleheader at 2:30 pm CST against Rice, which went 2-1 in their season-opening Rice Invitational last weekend. The Owls, who received eight votes in this week’s AVCA poll, defeated Texas Tech (3-0) and UT-San Antonio (3-2) before falling to Ole Miss (3-0) in their three matches over the weekend.

Rice’s success in their tournament somewhat depended on their defense. In the Owls’ wins against Texas Tech and UTSA, the team totaled 60 and 67 digs while only collecting 46 digs in their loss to Ole Miss.

As a team, Rice doesn’t hit particularly well—their team hitting percentages against Texas Tech, UTSA, and Ole Miss were .240, .211, and .125, respectively. For comparison, Missouri hit .326 in their three-match sweep in the Tiger Invitational.

None of Rice’s opponents were ranked.

Conversely, Pepperdine began their season with some stiff competition. The Waves opened their season with a 3-0 loss to New Mexico, which received 55 votes in this week’s AVCA poll (the second-most of any non-ranked vote receiver).

That loss was followed by a 3-1 loss to No. 4 Stanford, although the point totals for each set reveal the match was not as close as the 3-1 number may indicate. Pepperdine lost the first two sets 25-14 and 25-17 before winning the third set 25-21. After that blip on the radar, Stanford reverted to its early-match dominance and downed Pepperdine 25-16 in the final set.

Pepperdine didn’t come out of their weekend empty-handed, though, as they knocked off Tulane 3-0 to close out the weekend in New Mexico. Despite their 1-2 weekend, Pepperdine still received 17 votes in the AVCA poll—they may have just ran into competition that was far superior to their team (especially in the case of Stanford).

As a team, Pepperdine (.260) hits better than Rice but only totaled 108 digs in three matches. If those numbers hold—which they very well may not given the small sample size—Pepperdine will bring a better offense but worse defense to the table than Rice.

Missouri shouldn’t have a problem with Eastern Washington, which hit just .167 over a 1-2 weekend at the Invitational at Seattle. After a 3-0 win over Mercer, Eastern Washington dropped matches to Seattle (3-2) and No. 9 Washington (3-0).

While Maryland, Nevada, and Utah Valley weren’t pushovers, none of them are considered to be NCAA Tournament contenders. Those three teams really didn’t push Missouri last weekend, but taking care of lesser competition at home was a good test for Missouri to pass.

Now, the next test becomes whether Missouri can fight past better competition on the road. While a season can’t be made or broken in the second week of competition, a couple of losses in Malibu would be a rude awakening for a Missouri team that’s riding high after a great first weekend.

And if Missouri can come out of Malibu with two or three wins, it’ll serve as a nice passing grade for a team that struggled on the road in 2009. Wins on the road are key to getting Missouri back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2007, and their first road test will be this weekend in California.