The Penn State men's rugby team will be going up against the unknown this Saturday at 11 a.m. at the West Campus Fields, when it faces the University of Pennsylvania.

The unknown lies with the loss, due to injury, of two key players -- Michael Mcgeachy and Tim Fuhrmeister. Mcgeachy is out with an ankle injury, while Fuhrmeister has a concussion and will be out for at least two weeks.

Mcgeachy and Fuhrmeister play important roles for the Ruggers and losing them both early in the season is a blow to the team.

"Yeah, Michael is a big presence on the field in our set pieces and loose play," Penn State men's forwards coach Don Ferrell said. "We will definitely miss his running ability."

Lineouts, which have been something the Ruggers have been working on since the beginning of this season's practice, will be much tougher as Fuhrmeister was an instrumental player.

Injuries like these have been something that Ferrell has been expecting and at the beginning of the season he told his forwards that he would be rotating them on a regular basis.

Ferrell said that he was going to use a 10- to 11-man rotation in the forwards to limit injuries and have fresh legs on the field.

To minimize the loss of Mcgeachy, a versatile player who plays both prop and eighth man, last week's man-of-the-match against the Barbarians, Alex Johnson, will have to step up his performance.

"Ever since he was a freshman, he has been working hard on his conditioning and skills," Ferrell said "and it has finally paid off."

Adam Zicolski will replace Mcgeachy at the tighthead prop position.

For Fuhrmeister, the strategy Penn State plans to use is to rotate players Wadi Gumero, Bret Ilgen and Jason Fisher around in the pack.

Penn is a new program and, because of this, the Ruggers are not sure what their strengths and weaknesses are.

"It should be a good match," Ferrell said. "They are an up-and-coming program and they want to prove something by coming here and beating Penn State."

Even though they won their game against the Babas last weekend, the Ruggers knew that they would have to make some improvements.

One of the things that Penn State worked on was its aggressiveness. This has been something the Ruggers have trying to improve since the start of this season's practices.

"We have been working on a few things to tune up our team, like our physical presence," Ilgen said. "We need to get a little meaner."

Other things the Ruggers focused on were their ball handling skills and getting at the breakdowns together as a team and not individually.

"We were basically working on the little things," Ferrell said. "Things like taking care of the ball in contact, the speed of support and technical repetitions like our lineouts."

One thing that the Ruggers are sure about is their mentality for this game, which is focused. The feeling among the team is that for them to reach their aspirations by the end of the season, they cannot afford to rest on their laurels.

"I feel that everybody is in the right mind," Ilgen said. "But there is always room for improvement."

One thing that the Ruggers will have to be careful of is that they are habitual slow starters. This happened at last week's game and, although they did not fold under the early pressure, this is a habit that they are going to have to kick for them to be successful this season.

"It's up to us, the coaching staff, to tell the boys that the first 15 minutes are important because it sets the tone for the rest of the game," Ferrell said. "We are notoriously slow starters and that is something that we are trying to change."