Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1138762
P enn State had been ranked anywhere from ninth to 11th in the various pre- season men's lacrosse polls before playing host to Villanova in its Feb. 2 opener. The Nittany Lions won that game, 17-7, and they won six of their next seven games, too, several by double-digit margins. By the time they opened their Big Ten season against Maryland in late March, they had risen to No. 1 in the polls and were out- performing just about every preseason expectation that had been established for them. They then went on to outperform every Big Ten prediction that had been established for them, winning the league's regular-season and tournament titles after having been picked third in the preseason poll. And yet, when they met Yale in the NCAA semifinals in May, the Lions were not in a just-happy-to-be-here mood. Although they had already achieved something no previ- ous Penn State team had done by earning a spot in the NCAA's final four, their goal was to do something else no previous PSU team had done: win a national championship. So when the Bulldogs jumped out to an early 10-2 lead, coach Jeff Tambroni could see in his players' eyes that they were taking it hard. Yale had been the only team to defeat Penn State during the regular season, and now it was threatening to effectively end the Lions' championship bid well before halftime of the teams' rematch. "It was a tough moment," Tambroni said. "These guys have enjoyed two things: one, playing the sport of lacrosse and, two, playing alongside their teammates. It's been so much fun. I say that each and every week, it has been so much fun. This has been one of the most rewarding sea- sons, because they enjoyed it so much. And they just really weren't enjoying it. You enjoy it more when you win a lot more than when you lose, and when you're down 10-2, that's tough to enjoy. I could just see it in their eyes. They had the weight of the world on them instead of just going out and playing a game of lacrosse. "Maybe we made too much out of it or too little out of it," he added, "but we wanted them to relax and compete and we believed if we did this over time we were going to come back and put together a de- cent effort. Just relax and try to enjoy the opportunity that you earned by playing for the last nine months." The Lions did all that, but it wasn't enough. They surged in the second quar- ter, at one point scoring two goals in a 9- second span, and they trailed by only three at halftime, 12-9. Throughout the second half, though, the Bulldogs re- sponded whenever they were threatened and held on for a 21-17 victory May 25 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. "We just couldn't get the ball rolling our way," said Grant Ament, who led the Lions with five assists and three goals. "Every time we seemed to score in that second half, they had an answer. Credit them. Their offense played incredible. Their defense played well." Even though they fell short of their ul- timate goal, the Nittany Lions enjoyed a historic season – a season that could set them up for even more success in the years to come. After claiming the Big Ten tournament championship with a thrilling overtime victory over preseason favorite Johns A BRIGHT FUTURE After a record-setting season, the PSU men's lacrosse team sees big things ahead | VARSITY VIEWS HELPING HAND Ament averaged 5.65 assists per game for the Lions, breaking an NCAA record that had stood since 1978. Photo by John Patishnock