The men's fencing team redefined the word comeback in Saturday's regular-season ending performance.

The Lions came back from last weekend's disappointing 14-13 loss to Yale and destroyed Haverford, 27-0, for the second year in a row. Then they came back from 7-2 and 11-7 deficits to beat Columbia, 15-12.

It wasn't very easy, though. Only Ali Rezazadeh in sabre and Steve Flores in foil recorded wins as Columbia took the lead in the first round.

When the men huddled before the start of the second round, they found the score rather ridiculous.

"I told them we had to get our act together," Jim Marsh said as he devoured a bag of chips after the match. "We knew we had to win and everybody had to focus."

As David Cox had predicted, it was up to who wanted the win more. The Lions decided that after their first round of losses, that they wanted it a little bit more than before.

Things started looking better for the Lions in the second round. They had the crowd behind them all the way. They repeatedly cheered "sweet! sweet touch!" every time their teammates made impressive points.

They fought back, but still were down 11-7 at the close of the second round. Once again they huddled, preparing for the final round of action. The first team to reach 14 wins takes the match so the Lions had a lot of work ahead of them.

"We kept our spirit as the matches went on," assistant coach Wes Glon said. "It gives the team confidence to come from behind. We lost most of the early bouts with very close scores, which sometimes is even better than winning a bout because the team is so psyched up."

The Lions broke from their huddle for the final time with a roaring "We are . . Penn State" as the Columbia roar became more of a whimper from a team losing its grip on the match.

Sabre took off running with three straight wins. David Cox started the round with a quick, concise 5-0 win. Chris Reuter seemed to only tease his opponent by allowing him one touch in a 5-1 win. Rezazadeh then won his third bout of the day.

Thus began the comeback. The Lions were down 7-2 in the first round, 11-7 in the second, and started off the third with three wins to bring them up to 11-10. Then the foil and epee squads took to the strips.

The fencers continued to win and were determined not to stop until one minor mishap. In a controversial bout featuring Louis Kun and Columbia's Mike Feldshuh, the Lions saw their plan begin to fall apart.

The bout started out heated as Feldshuh waved his finger in a taunting fashion at Kun. Twice he fell to Kun's touches and twice he waved his finger.

"I don't really know what he was saying; he was just mad that he ran into me," Kun said. "If you run full speed towards a guy that outweighs you by 60 pounds, that just happens."

Then a key point was taken from Kun as Feldshuh claimed his weapon wasn't working properly. Teammates and coaches argued with the director over the proper way to test the weapon for malfunctions. It was too late, the point was gone, and the fencers had to go on. The score was 3-2 in Kun's favor.

"It wasn't worth it to protest the call any further," Glon said. "The team spirits were up and it takes a long time to go through a protest and that would only slow down the action."

Unfazed by the mishap, Kun came back to take another point, again giving him the 4-2 advantage. His opponent then managed to make a legitimate touch, minus all the taunting he had been giving Kun earlier. Again, however, the director made a questionable call for a point in Feldshuh's favor.

Marsh stepped in and tried to explain to the director that Feldshuh's blade had not even hit Kun but had only touched his blade. In most cases, a fencer is responsible for his equipment when it responds to an opponent's blade. A director can reverse that rule, however, if the point blatantly didn't hit the proper target area.