An upset of nationally-ranked Villanova in the preliminary round led the men's lacrosse team to its fourth consecutive victory in the Penn State Invitational this weekend.

After defeating Villanova, 13-6, to advance to the championship match, the Lions crawled all over Virginia Military Institute, 22-7, in yesterday's championship game.

The Lions (3-2) started strong against the Wildcats, opening the first quarter with three goals and holding the Wildcats to none. The second quarter started to diminish hopes of a win as the Wildcats counterattacked and took the lead, 4-3.

However, that was the last time the Wildcats got a taste of success. Penn State jumped back on top with a 5-4 lead and never turned back. Chris Lehman (two goals, two assists), Ted Peddy (four goals), Jim Laverty (two goals) and Joel Brous (three goals) led the Lions' offense.

"(Lehman) did a great job," Coach Glenn Thiel said. "He moved the ball, he's a good feeder and he sees the field and he makes other people better."

Scoring wasn't limited to those four, though. Pete Makover, Chris Marcus and Scott Bailer each had one goal, and Bailer and Greg Guarton had assists. Overall, the Lions tallied 47 shots.

The defense played a crucial part in the team's success. Paul Gilhool, Paul McKelvey and Mark Dardaris led the defensive unit in its aggressive play and powerful stops.

"What we wanted to do was pressure the ball really hard so they couldn't generate their offense as well as they did in the past," Gilhool said. "We just wanted to overpower them and make them make mistakes. We were just trying to run them as hard as we can and outrun the team more than outplay them."

Thiel attributed much of the Lions' success to goalie J.J. Pearl. Pearl played the entire game and tallied 30 saves.

"You've got to have a great goalie," Thiel said. "You can't have an average goalie if you're going to play run and gun lacrosse. You run and gun and people are going to get some shots on you because you're going to miss. So for our style, we need a stopper, and today, (Pearl) was the stopper."

The Lions also dominated in ground balls. Thiel wanted to work specifically on scooping up ground balls during practices. The extra work paid off as the Lions controlled 61 ground balls to the Wildcats' 46.

"There was one long ground ball early in the first quarter and we were just after it the whole time," Thiel said. "It just got everybody juiced up because we knew that was the one thing that we had to do -- it set the tone for the rest of the game."

Following the win, the Lions had to gather their gear and clear out Holuba Hall so Lehigh and VMI squeaked out a 16-15 win with Pete Tunnard's goal in sudden death play. The win matched VMI against the Lions in yesterday's championship match.

In the first 15 minutes against VMI, the Lions scored 10 goals and allowed only three. The scoring drive continued into the second quarter, which ended with the Lions holding a commanding lead, 15-4.

"It's easy to play well in one game and just to totally slack off and play really badly in the next game and it was important to us to keep consistent in this game," Peddy said.

Peddy remained consistent in that he was the top scorer both days. He only played in the first half of Sunday's game and scored six goals. Ten other Lions scored.

Jamie Morse, Chris Nutter and Steve Murphy shared time in goal throughout the game. All three, plus many other Lions could be found after the game signing autographs for admiring fans.