The most potent 1-2 offensive punch in Division I men’s lacrosse has been humming along with flair and knockout punches since the opening day of the 2019 season. And any potential opponent of top-ranked, top-seeded Penn State in the NCAA tournament must tangle with an unsettling reality about the rest of the Nittany Lions’ top-rated offense.

Should junior attackman Mac O’Keefe and/or redshirt junior attackman Grant Ament — the sport’s top goal-scorer and top feeder this year — suffer a sub-par day in the tournament, Penn State’s chances to win the school’s first NCAA title figure to decrease. But this offense has been so relentlessly productive and versatile with so many consistent weapons that the Nittany Lions would appear to have an answer for everything.

It’s easy for some to get caught up in history when assessing Penn State’s chances to win it all. The Nittany Lions had never won an NCAA tournament game in four previous trips dating to 2003 before throttling UMBC 25-10 on Sunday.

But in this 49th NCAA tournament, Penn State is clearly the team to beat.

No offense has played faster, cleaner and smarter and with more precision and consistent execution in 2019. No one has shared the ball and shot it better. No one has made big scoring runs look as routine. And no one has a jab-and-hook combination like Ament and O’Keefe.

“Mac can rip the ball and pick corners from anywhere inside the box,” Penn State senior midfielder Nick Spillane says of Penn State’s 66-goal man. “Grant has that great combination of stick skills and vision you can’t teach. His ability to get the ball where it’s got to go and do it with either hand is something I’ve never played with before.”

A year after a preseason foot injury cost him the 2018 season, Ament has been the game’s biggest difference maker, with all due respect to Loyola’s Pat Spencer. With an NCAA quarterfinals encounter with Spencer’s Greyhounds waiting, Ament owns the single-season assists record with 83.

“Being smaller in stature, I’ve had to find ways to separate myself,” says the 5-foot-9, 165-pound Ament. “Being a great passer was one way to do that.”

Nittany Lions coach Jeff Tambroni says Ament and O’Keefe, besides being twin nightmares for opposing defensive coordinators, set the tone for Penn State every day, not just on game day.

“One of the things I most enjoy walking down to the practice field is knowing what we’re going to get,” Tambroni says. “Mac and Grant always bring elite effort. Mac is still the first guy on and last guy off every day.

“They have allowed other guys to develop at their own pace. Some of our younger guys are allowed to play with confidence that’s a little before their time, because of the leadership of Nick Spillane, Mac O’Keefe and Grant Ament.”

And therein is the added edge Penn State appears to have in the pressure cooker they will or should face at some point deeper into May.

It could happen if Loyola goes toe to toe with the Nittany Lions in a quarterfinals shootout and goalie Jacob Stover gets hot once more for the Greyhounds. It could happen in the semifinals against defending champion Yale, who have an equalizer weapon in faceoff stud TD Ierlan and is the only team to beat Penn State, 14-13, on Feb. 23.

The Yale loss came after the Nittany Lions had announced themselves with a 3-0 start that was a combined, 61-goal fireworks display against Villanova, Stony Brook and Robert Morris.

Since the Yale loss, Penn State has shown it can win tight ones by going 3-0 in one-goal games, most notably its epic 18-17 takedown of Johns Hopkins in overtime to win the school’s first Big Ten tournament —  or any conference tournament. The Nittany Lions have grinded out a 13-10 win over Maryland. And they have kept scoreboard operators busy all year by winning 14 games by an average of seven goals.

What sets Penn State apart is its offensive balance and efficiency. You’d think a team leading the NCAA in scoring (17.81 goals per game), points per game (28.5) and man-up offense (60 percent) would be taking a ton of shots.

But the Nittany Lions are extremely economical, averaging barely 40 shots per contest. They have made an incredible 43.6 percent of their shots. That is a huge factor in Ament’s assists record. Nobody puts the ball on a tee like him, and he is being rewarded by his shooters.

O’Keefe has made 46 percent of his team-high 143 shots. Redshirt junior attackman Dylan Foulds has scored 36 goals on 46.8-percent shooting. Sophomore midfielder Jack Kelly has 36 scores on 50-percent shooting. Freshman T.J. Malone has 30 goals on 48.4 percent.

Ament has scored a modest 26 goals, but has shot a tidy 42.6 percent. On most teams, Spillane’s 37.3-percent shooting would easily be among the leaders. On Penn State, Spillane ranks last among the starting six on offense.

“We don’t pop off the page with big, strong, athletic dodgers. But we put out six talented guys who are willing to share the ball and stay within their strengths as shooters,” says Spillane, who adds that O’Keefe is the only shooter with full-time permission to fire from outside the 12-yard range.

“The entire team has done a really good job of holding each other accountable for things we deem non-negotiable. [We want] good shooting angles at a reasonable distance,” Tambroni says. “If someone doesn’t do it, our cohes no longer need to say anything. The players monitor that.”

At the end of the first season with a shot clock that has forced more action and created more shooting and scoring, the Nittany Lions entered the school’s fifth NCAA tournament — third under Tambroni — at the ideal time.

Junior faceoff man Gerard Arceri (63.4 percent) is feeding the offense sufficiently once again, and Penn State is cashing in with the best collection of scorers it has ever had. The Nittany Lions are coming off their first Big 10 tournament title after slugging it out with Hopkins with the look of a desperate team. That’s a great, revealing sign for Penn State.

“We’re walking down a path we haven’t seen. This is uncharted territory. We’ve had so many firsts with this team,” Tambroni says. “But there is a consensus of belief [among them] that they can achieve.”

Recent history also suggests, why not Penn State?

Loyola had gone two decades without advancing past the quarterfinal round and had not won a first-round game under then seventh-year coach Charley Toomey, before the Greyhounds won the 2012 title with an 18-1 record.

North Carolina needed 23 years to get back to the final four, and the 2016 team slipped into the NCAAs with six losses. Yet the Tar Heels ran the table to win the school’s first crown in 25 years.

Last year, a Yale team that had played in one quarterfinal since 1992 rolled to the school’s first championship.

So Penn State had never won an NCAA tournament game coming into the weekend. That’s no longer the case. Looks like the perfect time for this year’s loaded Nittany Lions to rewrite that history and take a Memorial Day victory lap in Philadelphia.