Winning a fourth consecutive tournament was not on the agenda this weekend.

However, another realization was definitively met.

This year's Penn State men's golf team is good, and very deep.

The Nittany Lions finished fifth overall at the Landfall Tradition in Wilmington, N.C., with a team score of 871 (295-288-288) for the three-round tournament.

More pleasing than the fifth place finish in a tournament, that Penn State men's golf coach Greg Nye deemed as the most competitive field the Lions would face this season, was the performance put on by the true freshman, Jason Pannone.

Pannone was on the brink of exiting the Lions top five rotation after a sloppy round at Georgetown.

However, Nye evaluated the circumstances and, in what he said was in the best interest of the team, took Pannone along on the trip to Wilmington.

Pannone carded a 3-under par score, shooting rounds of 70, 71 and 72, that propelled him to a tie for sixth-place in the overall individual standings.

"He played with some of the best players in the country and was unfazed by their presence," Nye said. "He played with poise and really did a phenomenal job."

In fact, Pannone was paired with Minnesota Golden Gopher's senior golferm Justin Smith in the tournament's second round.

Smith went on to win the individual championship, but was outplayed by Pannone.

Not only was the tournament significant for Pannone as an individual, but it was also extremely important for the Lions from a team perspective.

Pannone exemplified something Nye and the other Lions' golfers preached about before the start of the season -- team depth.

The Lions have competed in five tournaments this fall.

In all of them, four different golfers have emerged to take top individual honors overall for the Penn State team.

Marco Poccia claimed first at the Northern Intercollegiate, Mark Leon took honors at the Temple Invitational and MacDonald Cup, Ted Neville was first at the Hoya Invitational and now Pannone did his damage at the Landfall Tradition. Nye claims that if the scoring of golf tournaments would be five-man scoring, unlike the four-man scoring that takes place, that the aggregate score that the Lions recorded in this weekend's tournament, would have catapulted them to a second-place finish.

"I think we upset five or six teams at Wilmington," Nye said. "We had to play great, I mean we really played well and it was exciting for our guys. We were only five shots out of second ... pretty fun."