Panicless Penn State Staves Off Army, Advances to NCAA Semifinals

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — TJ Malone remembers what it was like starting as a freshman on a Penn State team loaded with stars like Grant Ament, Mac O’Keefe and Chris Sabia, the dominance uncorked nearly all season and the exhilaration of a breakthrough trip to the NCAA semifinals.

He’ll bookend his career with another appearance in the final four after he helped the Nittany Lions build an early lead and then fend off Army 10-9 before 13,554 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

“They made it look so easy, so I think I thought I was going to be there every year since,” Malone said. “But life happens, and you go through ups and downs, and it just feels amazing to be going back there.”

Matt Traynor added two goals for fifth-seeded Penn State (11-4), which will face top-seeded Duke (15-2) in Philadelphia at noon on Saturday after enduring consecutive losing seasons coming out of the pandemic.

Gunnar Fellows had three goals for the Patriot League champion Black Knights (13-4), who were making their first quarterfinal appearance since 2010 and seeking their first trip to the semifinals since 1984.

The Black Knights trailed 8-3 early in the third quarter but scrapped their way within a goal before failing to get a shot off on its last possession. Penn State celebrated twice — first when the horn sounded, and then again after a video review determined Jacob Morin fired a shot into the net after time expired.

“It’s easy when you’re playing well and you’re at the top of it and you just feel the energy,” Army coach Joe Alberici said. “Today, I wouldn’t call that our best right away, yet they just grinded away and still found a way to be a second too late, I guess — still found a way to put themselves in a position. That’s representing the jersey.”

In some ways, it was a perfect way for this Penn State team to secure its place on the season’s final weekend. It wasn’t the smoothest game, and it wasn’t a display of complete dominance, but there was always a sense the Nittany Lions would not be outworked — even by a service academy foe that was every bit as unrelenting.

So when Army jumped to a 2-0 lead at the start of what for much of the day was a game low on shots and high on turnovers, the Nittany Lions got to work.

“Every time we’ve been down and every time we’ve gone through a really challenging time, they have responded,” Penn State coach Jeff Tambroni said. “I mean every time. … There was no panic.”

The Nittany Lions rattled off six goals in 10 minutes, securing a reasonable split of possession while also stymieing Army’s balanced offense. But shortly after Penn State went up 6-2, it faced maybe its biggest challenge of the day.

Defenseman Jack Posey tripped over the back of the net early in the second quarter and had to be helped off the field with an apparent leg injury. He was sidelined for the rest of the day, though he exhorted the defense from the sideline while leaning on crutches.

“You could tell it took the wind out of our team’s sails,” Tambroni said. “He is an emotional leader, he is a leader by example, he is just a terrific young man. That was a challenge. It was a challenge to see a teammate and friend go down like that, and you could see we just lacked emotion. It was big-time. It was real. You could feel it on the sideline. I thought our defense did a really good job of figuring out ways to make up for his loss.”

With senior Sam Sweeney bumping down from long pole to fill Posey’s absence, Army didn’t get going on offense until late in the third quarter. Up until then, the Black Knights hardly looked like the team that dropped 16 goals on Maryland a week earlier.

Army had 14 shots and 12 turnovers in the first half, looking disjointed until finally calming down in the final 20 minutes.

“We were really struggling to string a couple passes together, so we became pretty singular in our offense, and that’s a tough way to beat a good goalie in those situations,” Alberici said.

Will Coletti scored off a faceoff win, and Bailey O’Connor (back from an injury absence that kept him out of the Black Knights’ tournament opener at Maryland) both scored late in the third and Morin brought Army within 9-7 with 14:14 to go.

Penn State’s Kevin Winkoff responded with 7:38 remaining, but the Black Knights closed within 10-9 on goals from Fellows and Finn McCullough, who again started on attack in place of the injured Paul Johnson after not playing in any regular-season games after March 18.

Army twice called timeout in the final minute, and Morin eventually got to the middle of the field in the closing seconds. However, he was swarmed and stripped of possession, a dogpile forming on the ball until time expired — just before Morin regained the ball and zipped it past Jack Fracyon (11 saves).

“I saw a few sticks in the way, and I knew we had to get a shot off quick,” Morin said. “I tried to split them there and maybe come over the top. It didn’t work out and ended up on the ground. Just tried my best to come up with that ground ball and get it off as quick as possible.”

With that, Penn State swarmed onto the field to savor a belated return trip to Philadelphia. Only four players, including Malone, remain from that 2019 team that headed to its first semifinal as a No. 1 seed and wound up losing 21-17 to Yale.

This time, the Nittany Lions will be the ones to take a shot at the top seed. It’s all they could have hoped for in the summer, fall and winter after a pair of forgettable seasons and bringing minimal tournament experience into a postseason that has now featured gutsy one-goal defeats of Princeton and Army.

“Coming into the season unranked, we didn’t know what to expect after two losing seasons,” Malone said. “We just put our heads down and worked. And worked. And worked. No one believed in us. No one was writing about us. But we believed in our locker room.”