Penn State Men’s Lacrosse Upsets No. 18 Johns Hopkins, Tambroni Gets Career Win No. 200

Story posted March 28, 2021 in CommRadio, Sports by Matthew Scalzo

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It was a rainy game at Panzer Stadium on Sunday afternoon as Penn State upset No. 18 Johns Hopkins, 11-8. The Nittany Lions got back in the win column and improve to 2-4 on the year, while the Blue Jays dropped their second in a row.

Nittany Lions’ goalie Colby Kneese was the best player on the field, he finished the game with a season-high 15 saves. “They gave me phenomenal shots, basically everything came from the outside, which is a call you ask for as a goalie,” Kneese said about how his defense helped him stop the attack of Johns Hopkins.

“I’m just really proud of the guys,” Penn State head coach Jeff Tambroni said about his team’s performance. “I think the moment we got on the bus after the Michigan game we started to put our focus immediately on this game.”

Offensively, the Nittany Lions got production from all over the place. Five different players scored for the blue and white. “I thought the best thing that happened today was that there were multiple contributions from so many guys in so many different facets of the game,” Tambroni said.

Attackman Mac O’Keefe was the main goal scorer for Penn State, adding four more goals to his résumé as he closes in on Duke’s Justin Guterding’s record of 212 goals. O’Keefe just needs seven more goals to pass Guterding.

“I thought in the first one for whatever reason, we just seemed to be on the retreat the whole game,” Tambroni said about the last meeting with Johns Hopkins. In that contest, just two weeks ago, the Nittany Lions were outclassed, losing 13-6 in Baltimore.

“So we tried to come out here and just pour it on the field knowing we were going to be back at home and see if we can reverse the momentum we had in the first half,” Tambroni said about what the team did differently from the last meeting. 

With 12:52 left to go in the game, Johns Hopkins’s Garrett Degnon tied the game up at eight. Penn State then scored the final three goals to finish the game, O’Keefe had two and Jack Traynor scored the other.

The Nittany Lions were also strong from the faceoff circle, winning 18 of 23 draws. Gerard Arceri won 15 faceoffs, while Jake Glatz won three.

It was a special afternoon for coach Tambroni who picked up career win No. 200. “I’m proud to have done it with this particular group and in this particular year, too, which says a lot about the resiliency and the heart of this group, so I’m proud to share it with this group out there,” Tambroni said.

The Nittany Lions will look to ride this momentum as they travel to face No. 3 Maryland on Saturday, April 3 at 1 p.m. The Terrapins bested Penn State earlier in the year 13-7 in State College.

 

Matthew Scalzo is a freshman majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email mms7477@psu.edu.

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Matt Scalzo

Third Year / Broadcast Journalism

Matthew “Matt” Scalzo is a third-year from Ridgefield, Connecticut majoring in broadcast journalism. Matt is a Basketball Insider, broadcaster and writer for the sports department. With CommRadio he has called football, hockey, basketball, baseball, volleyball and lacrosse games. Matt has called matches for Penn State Women’s Volleyball on both TV and radio. He has written countless articles and appeared on podcasts, live shows and is a host of the Chi-Town Sit-Down with Thomas English, which covers everything Chicago sports. Matt spent the 2022 summer as the Drector of Broadcasting & Media for the Sanford Mainers in the NECBL. If you want to contact him, email him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).