Feb. 11, 2018
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - For Penn State men's lacrosse headcoach Jeff Tambroni, the symbol of a great team comes down to winning thebattles between the 30-yard lines. Come Saturday afternoon, the Nittany Lionsbounced back from a disappointing season-opener with a 15-8 win against Hobart.
Following last weekend's overtime loss to Villanova, therewas perhaps nobody more disappointed than Nittany Lion sophomore faceoffspecialist Gerard Arceri.
"He felt horrible after last week's game and it wasn't onhim, but he holds himself to such a higher standard," Tambroni said.
This week, Arceri spent time in practice keying in on communicationwith his wings, focusing on helping the defense by giving his team moreopportunities for possession.
"In practice we do this drill where instead of the wings,traditionally in the game where they're so far out, we kind of bring the wingsin and they give me a lot of pressure when I pull out the ball and they do agood job of boxing each other out so I think we really improved from last gameon that," Arceri said. "It's something to be pretty excited about I'd say."
For Arceri and the Nittany Lions, the excitement didn't comeeasy, as Hobrt erased a 3-goal Penn State lead to tie the score, 4-4, at theend of the first quarter. At the faceoff x, Arceri was also just 2-for-8.
By halftime, the Nittany Lions were trailing by one, 7-6, assenior Ryan Keenan broke up 3-0 Hobart scoring streak with a wraparound goaloff a feed from junior Nick Spillane with seven seconds remaining in the secondquarter.
It was all Penn State out of the break, as the Nittany Lionsput away back-to-back goals from junior Matt Donnelly and Spillane early in thethird quarter to pull ahead, 8-7, igniting the offense.
The Nittany Lions saw Arceri win all five faceoff attemptsin the third quarter as Penn State dominated possession.
"When I'm dealing with that adversity and stuff like that, Ijust try to stay true to my ability and I think that worked out for me," Arcerisaid.
Arceri also gave credit of course to his wings, who dialedup the toughness in the second half.
"We talked about in the second half trying to keep the wingsoff of me and just letting me go one-on-one with the other faceoff guy so Icould direct the ball wherever I need to," Arceri said.
For Tambroni, it made all the difference.
"Last week, we just kind of lost focus in the second halfand just played, we didn't execute, we just played," Tambroni said. "Today I thought for 60 minutes, we didn't winthem all, certainly didn't win our fair share in the first half, but I thoughtwe stayed the course and tried to at least execute a game plan and I thought todaywas just a much better start to finish job by those wing guys. They made a bigdifference, that's a unit. I know Gerard gets a lot of credit for what he doesbut I thought today, those guys battled when the ball was on the ground andkept it alive."
Penn State capitalized on the increase in offensive possessions,scoring four goals in the third quarter. The Nittany Lions kept momentum alivein the fourth quarter to widen the scoring streak to a 9-1 advantage thatspanned the second half. Arceri also went 5-6 in faceoffs in the third quarterto finish 16-for-24 on the day.
"Bouncing off last week, the third quarter we had a bunch ofgoals and then the fourth quarter, we just fell off," Mac O'Keefe said. "Wejust wanted to stay together and not fall off like we did last week, it wassomething we focused on."
The Nittany Lions had little trouble executing a strongfinish, as O'Keefe added three goals in the fourth quarter to conclude the daywith a team-high five goals.
"Our message to our guys was lets reflect back," Tambronisaid. "Remember what happened when we were coming out of the huddle and to usethat experience to fuel a more cerebral second half. A more cerebral fourthquarter. Today I thought they played with a much better mindset, they were muchmore aware how the game was going situationally and took advantage of thesituations that were available."