Penn State men's lacrosse coach Glenn Thiel may have discovered a few new things about his team after its 8-7 loss to Maryland-Baltimore County last Saturday.

Unfortunately for Thiel, these discoveries are somewhat of an unpleasant surprise.

"Our mental preparedness just wasn't good," Thiel said. "We just didn't play well at all. We've got a nice senior class but they're not producing. There's a lot of little things we need to work on."

For starters, Thiel said this his midfielders need to cut down on foolish mental errors.

"Our middies couldn't create for us," Thiel said. "Sure they scored a few goals, and scoring a goal is nice but they don't override some of the other mistakes."

Another area of concern is the overall team defense. Although the Nittany Lions outshot the Retrievers 33-24, UMBC had several open looks at the cage.

"Our midfield defense wasn't as good and our team defense overall wasn't as sharp," assistant coach Lars Tiffany said. "We've been fortunate the past three games because Matt Vallone has been outstanding, but we may be relying on him a little too much.

"When we don't support each other on defense, a lot of mistakes occur. I'll take a couple goals myself, but there were a lot of goals they scored that were just the results of mental errors."

But the No. 16 Nittany Lions most pressing concern may simply be picking up loose balls.

"I guess the biggest problem is when the ball is on the ground, we don't pick it up," Thiel said. "It's almost like our guys are expecting the ball to jump into their sticks."

Even the players are recognizing that they need to turn things around in order to make a run at the ECAC title and a potential bid in the NCAA tournament.

"We need to step it up more," sophomore midfielder Marshall Feldman said. "We need to just play an all around better game on offense and defense.

"It's a long season and it's still early. We can't keep our heads down for too long. As a team, we're pretty mad at ourselves for the way we played today, but we'll practice tough this week and give UMass all we've got on Saturday."

This weekend's matchup with the No. 7 Minutemen couldn't have come at a worse time for a team that's searching for some answers. UMass is unbeaten in five games and just came off a 23-2 drubbing of Boston College on Saturday.

"UMass is the toughest place in the country to play at," Thiel said. "We really need to improve in a lot of areas if we want to hang with that team."