As the Penn State men's lacrosse team cycled the ball around the perimeter, trailing by five goals early in the third quarter, the ball came to midfielder Pat Heim at the restraining line, who appeared open for a shot.

One problem -- he dropped the ball.

Crouched along the sideline, Penn State men's lacrosse coach Glenn Thiel dropped his head and stared at the ground for a few seconds, only to watch again as Massachusetts retained possession and carried the ball out of harm's way.

After Heim sprinted off the field, Thiel waded through a few players to deliver a few choice words to the freshman. But it was the Minutemen who handed out the loudest message by far on Saturday. Sparked by two separate five-goal spurts, UMass (5-4, 1-0 ECAC) handed the Nittany Lions (3-4, 0-2) their second straight conference loss, a 17-8 defeat at a damp and muddy Jeffrey Field. UMass also served up a strong dose of reality.

"They were just better," Thiel said. "Better athletes, they ran harder, wanted to run harder more. We have more energy than that, but we played like we were just going to shake our heads and they were going to fall down."

Fall down they didn't. After Penn State starting goalie Mike Stoltz made a save on the initial shot of the game -- a wide open chance in front of the net, which was a recurring theme throughout the game -- the Minutemen rattled off five straight goals, capped by Gene Tundo's goal at 12:32.

The roar from the UMass sideline grew louder and louder with successive goals. Meanwhile, the Lions stood in silence.

"We were down 5-0 like that and they just had all the intensity," Penn State assistant coach Lars Tiffany said.

A flurry of goals, three by the Lions and two by the Minutemen, in the final two minutes of the second quarter gave UMass a 9-6 halftime lead, but the game really wasn't that close.

Employing a slide-and-recover scheme similar to a zone defense in basketball, the Lions were picked apart by the Minutemen, who used constant movement and precision passing to find the open man at the backdoor.

"I definitely feel like it's the worst thing I've done here in four years as a coach," Tiffany lamented.

Junior Josh LaGrow, who returned from injury, replaced Stoltz at the beginning of the third quarter. As Thiel and Tiffany agreed, they had to try something.

"I just thought it might give us a spark, it might jump us a bit," Thiel said.

It didn't help much, but LaGrow didn't see much help himself.

After Nate Whitaker scored at 1:08 of the final quarter to cut the lead to 13-8, UMass scored the final five goals, the last one of which was a snap shot in front of the net by Clay Stabert with just 4 seconds left in the game.

The UMass bench roared one last time. It was a fitting ending on the day.

"We didn't do anything on offense, we didn't do anything on defense," Thiel said.

"We got totally out-athleticed by a pretty good athletic team."

Message heard loud and clear.