The Penn State men's rugby team (2-1) wants everyone to understand something: Its season begins tomorrow in College Park, Md., against the University of Maryland Terrapins.

Forget about the loss to Ohio State last week and the wins against the Barbarians and the University of Pennsylvania, the Ruggers begin nil and nil from now on.

Against the Terrapins, Penn State will have to once more play without forward Michael McGeachy and lock Tim Fuhrmeister, who are out with injuries, while flyhalf Dominic Mara is listed as probable for tomorrow's game.

Against the Buckeyes, it seemed that the Ruggers' minds were somewhere on a beach in Cancun. The result was a first half where the Ruggers' offense kept stumbling and stumbling, while on defense the Ruggers were dragged a couple of yards before they brought the Buckeyes' backs down.

"Last weekend was probably the worst performance by a Penn State (rugby) team that I have ever seen," Penn State men's rugby coach Tim Ryland said.

For a side that takes pride in being competitive, the blowout by the Buckeyes was a wakeup call that is better forgotten. It showed the Ruggers that there are still things to work on. Luckily for the Ruggers, they still have a long season ahead of them and many games to play.

Practice this week was not the usual. The coaching staff was focused on making sure the players learned from the game on the weekend and make improvements. The players came in knowing that every position was up for grabs and therefore were more physical in practice.

Focusing primarily on defense, the Ruggers were trying to make improvements on coming up to the player, making the tackle and driving them backwards.

"Yeah, we worked on defense," Penn State forwards coach Don Ferrell said. "We went back to the basics, just defense, defense, defense and we also worked on our set positions."

Ferrell said that he was going to implement a new policy of taking tackle counts to show how many tackles and missed tackles a player makes in a game.

The Ruggers' last game saw two of the smallest guys on the field, the halfbacks, doing most of the tackling, which is not the sign of a good defensive team.

Tackling has been something that the Ruggers have been working on since last season, yet it seems to be a chronic problem that hurts them in the big games.

Ryland called it "the big question" and that only time will tell if the Ruggers have made improvements in this area.