Every athlete dreams of that magical senior season where everything falls into place and they leave their respective sport on top.

For the No. 17 Penn State men's lacrosse team seniors, it looks like their fairy tale ending will not happen.

The season started out, innocent enough, with an upset of then nationally ranked Notre Dame. That performance was followed by two victories over Air Force and Fairfield where the Nittany Lions (3-3, 0-2) took their overmatched opponents behind the proverbial woodshed.

Their first overall and ECAC loss came at the hands of No. 6 Georgetown in an 11-10 thriller.

The Lions were in the game the whole way and just came up short of beating one of the best teams in the country.

Since that point, the Lions have been anything but impressive and have probably cost themselves almost any chance of making their first ever NCAA tournament appearance.

In the last two games for the Lions, especially against the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the team looked sloppy throughout the game and unable to win key faceoffs or grab pivotal loose balls. Penn State lacrosse coach Glenn Thiel has cited the faceoff and groundball problems throughout the last two games.

"We had a little team meeting after the game (UMBC)," Thiel said. "We went over a few things about each game. The long-range goal is the to get in the tournament and the way to do that is to win the ECAC. It doesn't look like we will get into the tournament, we are going to have to knock some people off."

The team meeting focused on what the Lions have to do to start putting some wins on the board and getting back to what they did in the first three games of the season.

"We talked about not just going into a game and thinking we are going to beat them we actually have to go out there and beat them," attacker Tim Emmick said. "We have to play a smarter and more patient game on offense like we did in the first three games of the season."

For the seniors on the team, attackers Will Driscoll and Emmick, and midfielder Sean Droogan will have to be the one's to step up and prevent this team from falling into a downward spiral.

"I think it's upon everyone's shoulders, but I think everyone probably looks toward the older guys to lead them in the right direction," Emmick said. "People will look to our captains, but I think our team as a whole is trying to pull together for a team effort."

The Lions have an opportunity this weekend to get a big win as they will face No. 12 Massachusetts.

"We got to come back in this week with our head on straight," sophomore Charlie Perry said. "Hopefully we will comeback together and get some "W's".