The Lions representing the men's swimming and diving team at the NCAA Championships was expanded this weekend as two senior divers placed high enough to move on.

Seniors Steve Zamborsky and Jeff Eagles scored impressively on both boards and, more importantly, high enough on both to qualify for the national championships with decisive performances Friday and Saturday at the NCAA Prequalifying meet at Harvard's Blogett Pool.

Coach Craig Brown, who was voted Men's Diving Coach of the Year for the Northeast region by his fellow coaches, said he was pleased with the solid performance his divers were able to put in throughout their list of 11 dives and credited consistency as the key.

"I was real pumped that we got some people in there and I thought we had a real, real solid event," Brown said. "We made a couple of small mistakes, but the mistakes we made were the kind of mistakes I can tolerate -- they were aggressive mistakes because the guys were fired up and they were going after it."

The trip to NCAAs marks the first time under Brown that the Lions have legitimately qualified a diver for nationals. Last season, D.J. Hill competed at NCAAs on the 3-meter board, but only after Pitt diver John Sharkey was forced to bow out of the competition after failing his drug test.

On the 1-meter board Zamborsky scored 473.70 points in his 11-dive repertoire, enough to place him fourth among the competition and push him into NCAAs for the first time in his four years at Penn State. John Sharkey, who finished fourth on the 1-meter at Easterns, placed first.

Eagles, who had disappointing execution of his dives at Easterns, was able to put together his most solid list of dives all season, capturing first place on the 3-meter board with a score of 517.35, ahead of Princeton's Kenny Iams and Harvard's Chris Naverson.

"I was able to iron my mistakes out and come back focused," Eagles said. "It was a matter of doing one dive at a time and remembering what I had to do."

Freshman Chris Devine, who has been the Lions most consistent diver throughout the season, put together strong performances on both boards but was unable to put a solid, mistake-free list together for this meet and came up just short on both boards, placing fifth on 1-meter and sixth on 3-meter.

"We wanted to take all three guys and I think we were capable of that, but I'm not disappointed with not getting more (qualified)," Brown said. "I am very happy with who we've got going."

Zamborsky and Eagles join swimmers Walt Sopp, Nick Boyce, Adam Carroll, Thad Davis and James Sloat as the members of the men's swimming and diving team who are headed to the NCAA Championships at the University of Texas in Austin, March 28-30.