Penn State men's golfer Mark Leon said in the days leading up to the Hoya Invitational that if the weather conditions remained acceptable, then the Lansdowne Resort course would be receptive to scoring.

Head coach Greg Nye said that he told his players to play great in the first round because the tournament might end up only being one round.Leon was right. Nye was right.

The anticipated 36-hole Georgetown Hoya Invitational was cut down to one 18-hole round on Sunday. The Landsdowne Resort was engulfed by an inch and a half of rain throughout the night Sunday, and a steady rain on Monday put the greens under water, effectively ending the tournament.

However, the weather didn't arrive in time to extinguish the Nittany Lions fiery play. The Lions captured their third straight tournament championship by shooting a 288.

The Lions winning effort was led by Ted Neville, who fired a 3-under par 69 to garner top individual honors.

"Ted Neville's been working real hard and only had like one or two pieces of his puzzle to solve," Nye said, of his senior's progression throughout the fall. "He putted the ball the best he has this fall and he ended up winning the tournament. We were working a little bit on his vision and he felt that helped him get more in sync with the target. He went to a real simple-looking putter so he had to do a little more work with his eyes instead of relying on the putter to do it for him."

Greg Pieczynski and Marco Poccia scored extremely well with rounds of 70 and 71, respectively, in what could be considered another strong win.

"I think they [the team] came to the tournament with a lot of energy ... they knew the importance of the event and they went out and attacked right away," Nye said.

The Lions will be riding the three-tournament high into this weekend's Landfall Tradition held at the Country Club of Landfall in Wilmington, N.C., tomorrow through Sunday. The 54-hole tournament is filled with competition that Nye professes will be the Lions' most challenging.

"We wanna move up the food chain a little with respect to our national ranking, but it's gonna be hard," Nye said. "The entire field is good ... this is gonna be fun ... testing our skills against these guys. We look forward to it."

The Lions will be competing against teams predominantly from the South and Midwest -- collegiate golf hot beds -- like Florida State, Tennessee and Ohio State.

"I really feel good about what we're gonna do down there," Nye said. "I think we have a group of people that's extremely ready to play."