Blue White Illustrated

into overtime, T.J. Malone spun away from a defender behind the net and flipped a pass to O'Keefe standing alone on the backside. O'Keefe, the nation's leading scorer with an average of 3.86 goals per game, fired a low shot past goal- keeper Ryan Darby to give Penn State its championship. The goal was O'Keefe's sixth of the night, but as the overtime period got under way, he was dwelling on a shot that hadn't found the net. "The last shot I had in regulation was pretty wide open and I was pretty upset with myself," he told BTN. "I knew when I had the chance, I had to bury it." With the victory, Penn State claimed its first Big Ten tournament title. A week earlier, the Nittany Lions had won their first conference regular-season crown, wrapping up an undefeated Big Ten cam- paign with a 14-13 victory over Rutgers. The Lions then went on to defeat the host Scarlet Knights in the tournament opener, as Malone scored four goals in an 18-6 victory. Those accomplishments earned Penn State the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tourna- ment. The Nittany Lions were set to open the tourney May 12 against either Marist or UMBC. No matter how it ends, the Lions have enjoyed a history-making season. In ad- dition to racking up their first Big Ten championships, their 14 victories heading into the NCAA tournament were the most in school history. Individually, redshirt junior Grant Ament has set an NCAA single-season record with his 78 assists, while O'Keefe broke his own school record for most goals in a season with 60 heading into the NCAA tournament. O'Keefe is already the program's all-time leading scorer, and he still has another season of eligibility remaining. Prior to the conference tournament, Ament was a unanimous choice as Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, and the Lions had to make room on the way back to University Park for plenty of additional hardware, as senior Chris Sabia was named the league's Defensive Player of the Year and Tambroni was named Coach of the Year. O'Keefe was named the tour- nament MVP. Then, of course, there's that champi- onship trophy, which will serve as a nice reminder of a Big Ten season in which Penn State always seemed to find a way to emerge victorious. The Nittany Lions didn't win every game by double-digits, but that didn't matter at the conference tournament. As O'Keefe showed, a one- goal victory can be awfully satisfying, too. ■

• Cover