March 30, 2015
By Maria Canales, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Nittany Lion men's lacrosse team kicked off its Big Ten conference schedule by welcoming Ohio State to Happy Valley on Sunday. Despite a late rally, the Nittany Lions fell to the Buckeyes, 10-8.
Penn State got off to a quick start with senior Michael Richards scoring the first goal of the game, bringing the home crowd to its feet.
"Luckily [James] Burke passed me the ball and I just happened to be in the right place and luckily it went in," said Richards.
Although the Nittany Lions struck first, it was the Buckeyes who would return with five unanswered goals in the first half.
During the fourth quarter momentum shifted in favor of the Lions. Rallying from six gols down, sophomore Nick Aponte kick started a scoring spree for the Nittany Lions. Followed by goals from Brian Prestreau, Dan Craig and Matt Florence, the Lions came within two goals of tying the game.
"[The momentum] was nice, it's just we can't have that that late in the fourth quarter you have to have it earlier in the game," said Richards.
Richards also credited the change in momentum to several players that stood out in Sunday's game.
"I think that once we started winning faceoffs with Drake Kreinz, and James Burke played his heart out picking up ground balls, I think they did an insane job," said Richards. "I think those guys really made the difference coming out and then our offense did their job, when we actually gave them the ball, they did their job."
Penn State powered through its slow start and proved their skills and endurance can keep pace with the tough opponents they've faced.
"I think we realized that we can absolutely hang especially with all the close games we've had," said Richards. "We just have to realize that you need to put in a full 60 minutes, you can't just play in spurts. We know exactly what we can do and we have the power to do it we just have to put a game together."
Head coach Jeff Tambroni was satisfied with his teams overall performance against their long-time foe, but knows there is always room for improvement.
"Our kids came to win today and we were hoping not to play in the first Big Ten conference game here at Penn State, we were hoping to win," said Tambroni. "So I think that's going to probably put a cloud over, unfortunately, the kind of day that it maybe could have been at Penn State. But the other side of it is I thought our guys competed and I said that to them in the huddle, one thing I learned about them is that they gave an effort until the end."
With the first Big Ten game under their belts, the Nittany Lions look to learn and build off their experiences from Sunday's game. As soon as one game ends, the focus then turns to the team's next game; this week will be focused on Maryland. The team works one game at a time, a theme set early on in the season in attempts to focus all energy on one opponent.
"We have a short week of preparation against a really good Maryland team, so it's just going to be on us as a staff and as a team to get excited about a really good opportunity and opponent," said head coach Jeff Tambroni. "You know to win a game like that could change a lot, so from this moment on we'll go into the locker room, we'll start talking about that."
The Nittany Lions will spend this week gaining momentum for their road trip to Maryland on Saturday.