There is a fine line between beating an opponent and pummelling it. The men's lacrosse team crossed that line Saturday when it scored six goals in the first quarter, while allowing Drexel to score only six all game.

The Lions won, 13-6, but the 10-2 score at halftime tells more of the story than the final.

In the first half, freshman Joel Brous scored four goals and tri-captain Steve Graves added three more. Jim Laverty had a two goals in the game while Scott Bailer, John Hollerbach, Tim Conway and Greg Guarton all tallied one.

"We were worried that they would come out with a big spurt," Drexel Coach Randy Voight said, "and that's exactly what they did."

"We've been working on trying to concentrate on being mentally prepared to start quickly," tri-captain John Hollerbach said.

The Lions know how it feels to be on the other side of an early scoring barrage after giving up five unanswered goals in the first quarter of Wednesday's game at Towson State.

"We got beat pretty bad by Towson so we were really pumped up to beat Drexel," said sophomore defenseman Paul Gilhool.

The Lions were pumped up enough to control the ball for almost the entire first quarter, scoring five goals before the Dragons managed to get their first shot on goal with 2:50 remaining in the quarter. On the few occasions the Lions did give up the ball, aggressive checking denied the Dragons any chance to start an organized attack. The Lions focused a lot of energy on pressuring the Dragons' defensemen when they tried to clear the ball from their zone.

"I knew they were real young," Coach Glenn Theil said, "so we thought they would have trouble if we pressured them."

The Dragons play a slow-paced, settled offense, but the Lions took them out of their game by forcing them to play a fast-break game.

"They wanted to run us," Voight said. "They set the tempo and made us play their game."

"We were really together in the first half," Lion goaltender J.J. Pearl said. "But we started to get a little lackadaisical in the second half."

The Lions ran into penalty trouble in the second half and gave the Dragons several extra-man advantages.

"It wasn't like we had more fouls in the second half," Theil said. "They (the officials) just started calling everything."

The Dragons showed signs of life after the second intermission and outscored the penalty-plagued Lions 4-3 in the second half.

"There's a tendency to lay back after you get up by six or seven goals," Gilhool said. "We got a little lazy in the second half."

Voight said he was pleased his team outscored the Lions in the second half but added, "It only matters what you do in the final score."

Penn State and Drexel both field a large percentage of their teams from southeastern Pennsylvania, so many of the Lions had played against Drexel's players before.

"I've been playing against some of those guys for a couple of years," Gilhool said, "so it's fun to beat them."