The streak is over.

In only the second time since the 39-game series began, the Penn State men's lacrosse team (4-5, 2-2 ECAC) beat Navy (4-6, 0-4) 5-4 yesterday at Bigler Field in a highly contested defensive game. With the victory, the Nittany Lions snapped the Midshipmen's 10-game winning streak over Penn State. The win also denotes the first time the Lions have put together back-to-back wins. "It's just a great defensive game," Penn State men's lacrosse coach Glenn Thiel said. "We rotated well, we recovered well to the back side, we covered the crease well. I thought we could have had a few more goals early in transition and we didn't, which would have given us a little more breathing room."

Penn State played extremely aggressively on defensive, shutting down Navy's Ian Dingman, who has given opposing teams a difficult time of stopping him on offense this season with his monstrous 6-foot-3, 240-pound build. Leading the Lion defensive corps were senior captains Matt Zappia and Chris Garrity. Zappia played with possessed sense of urgency as the anchor in the back, while Zappia gave up four goals while saving seven shots.

"I thought we showed a lot of heart," Zappia said. "We lost five games earlier in the season and it was really hard on the team because a lot of guys got down. Penn State is a great school, we have a great coach, great guys on the team, and we just kept playing hard. Today was really the first game all year where we really stepped it up."

Penn State gave up only one goal in the first half of play, and led by a score of 4-1 at the break. However, the third quarter would prove to be the most momentous 15 minutes of the entire game.

Navy mounted a comeback in the third quarter on both the offensive and defensive fronts. The Midshipmen put in three goals in a four-minute span, including one with 20 seconds remaining in the third period. Zappia said that the brief lapses in the team's predominantly veteran defense are merely part of the game.

"It's not really a concern," he said. "We have so many seniors, that we can weather the storm."

Still, in the third quarter, sophomore Will Jones would score what would be the game-winning goal that put Penn State ahead 5-4. Both teams finished the game going scoreless in the fourth quarter.

"We came out, we knew it was going to be a tight defensive game," Jones said. "They play such good defense and we knew that they were going to possess the ball. We started out poorly and now the last few games we've finally found what was wrong with us."