You know the old saying -- practice makes perfect.

And when you can't practice, at least not in the elements in which you play, it's pretty tough to make perfect.

The Penn State men's golf team hasn't been able to hit the Blue or the White course much due to the snow and cold weather. Its lack of on-course practice contributed to a slow start at the St. Croix Collegiate Classic last weekend in which they placed seventh overall.

Penn State showed much improvement over the course of the three-day tournament.

"Our finish was just fine," Penn State men's golf coach Greg Nye said. "We're happy with our performance."

After round one, Penn State was sitting near the bottom of the tournament in 10th place with a score of 302. In the third round, however, the Nittany Lions picked up some slack by carding a 293, the third-lowest score of the day behind only Fresno State and Ohio State.

"We had a huge disadvantage," Penn State golfer Greg Pieczynski said. "Teams like Ohio State had already played two tournaments coming into St. Croix."

Penn State, on the other hand, came into the St. Croix tournament cold and slightly rusty, as this tournament officially marked the start of its spring season.

In seasons past, the Penn State team has had ample time to practice on the warm golf courses in Florida before its opening tournament.

This year, however, the team was unable to get a solid round of practice in prior to its season debut in the Virgin Islands.

The inclement weather and poor course conditions due to the recent snowfall prevented the team from getting the amount of course practice and preparation the Lions needed to be successful.

"We hope in the next three weeks that we get a crack in the weather," Nye said.

Although no Penn State golfer was able to place in the top 10 individually, senior Ted Neville came the closest with a 12th-place finish.

Like the team itself, Neville continued to improve each day. He started with a 4-over-par 76. In round three, Neville punctuated his overall performance with a 1-under-par 71.

While the Neville performed strongly, the underclassmen flashed some talent as well.

Sophomore Marco Poccia paced Penn State in the third round with a 3-under-par 69 and tied for 26th overall.

Poccia impressively shaved 10 strokes off his second-round total of 79.

Penn State placed seventh overall, but finished only four strokes behind the fifth-place Xavier Musketeers.

"We beat every team that we were ranked ahead of," Piecznski said. "It's promising how close we were to the teams that beat us."