Penn State Men’s Lacrosse Upsets No. 10 Penn In Keystone Rivalry
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - On a cloudy afternoon on Saturday, March 4, Penn State men’s lacrosse head coach Jeff Tambroni received his 100th career win due to a high powered Penn State offense led by Kevin Winkoff in the Nittany Lions’ 15-9 win over Penn.
In this matchup for the Keystone State, Winkoff started off hot notching his first and second goals of the game, followed by TJ Malone putting the Nittany Lions up 3-0 early in the first.
University of Pennsylvania’s Ben Smith answered back and the Quakers scoring continued with Hugh Mullane making the game 3-2 still in favor of Penn State at the end of the first quarter.
The second began with Penn’s Robert Schain tying the game at three and Sam Handley putting the Quakers up by one.
Nittany Lions defenseman Jack Posey tied the game at four scoring his first of the season and third career goal.
The Quakers went on to score two more goals by Cam Rubin and James Shipley, putting the Nittany Lions down by two.
Winkoff then went off to secure his hat-trick making the score 6-5. The first half ended with Penn State being down by one but they had something brewing.
Penn’s Shipley quickly shut that down and put the Quakers up by two once again to start the third period, but Mac Costin of the Happy Valley pride would respond bringing the blue and white back within one goal.
Winkoff then went on to score his fourth goal of the game which tied this matchup at seven a piece.
Schain restored Penn’s lead 8-7 but Costin responded just 34 seconds later to tie the battle of Pennsylvania at eight.
Shipley once again put Penn up by one, but Costin scored a hat-trick of his own to tie the game at nine and give the blue and white all of the momentum for the fourth and final quarter.
Costin started what would be the start of seven straight unanswered goals for Penn State.
Matt Traynor made the game 10-9 followed by Winkoff’s fifth goal.
“It felt good, I wasn’t really paying attention to whatever I was doing but just focusing on that scoreboard and making sure the team had more than them and that’s all that really mattered,” Winkoff said postgame. “We know what we're capable of, we know that we were supposed to win today, we just did our job.”
After that, Jack Traynor scored two back to back goals which included a miraculous dive into the crease that got the Panzer Stadium faithful on their feet.
The final two goals were scored by Posey notching his second of the game and fourth career goal along with TJ Malone finishing off an outstanding Penn State display of firepower.
The Nittany Lions won the game 15-9 in a showdown that team’s went punch for punch for the majority of it, as they upset their instate rival the tenth-ranked Quakers.
“We don’t really feel like it’s an upset,” Winkoff said. “I know to others it's big news, but to us, we just did our job.”
The win went down as the 100th in Tambroni’s career.
“The internal focus is I’m just so happy for these guys regardless of how many today was. I’m just happy about the way these guys battled in the second half,” Tambroni said. ”I was just proud of the way they just continued to keep coming back.”
The Nittany Lions are set to play against their third consecutive Ivy League opponent in Cornell University on March 11 in Ithaca, New York.
Chris Machado is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, please email cvm6238@psu.edu.
