There's an old saying that "the third time's a charm." In the case of the Penn State men's golf team, it seems to be the third round that's the charm.

After riding a final round 293 to a seventh-place finish in last month's St. Croix Collegiate Classic, the Nittany Lions did it again, using a third round 288 to boost them to a sixth-place finish this weekend at the 35th annual Marshall Invitational in Huntington, W. Va.

The team progressively lowered its score each round throughout the weekend, resulting in a final total of 875, just four strokes behind fourth-place finisher Ball State University.

Individuallly, Mark Leon and Marco Poccia tied for 12th place at 217.

After coming out of the first day with a seventh-place score of 587, it was the team meeting later that evening that pushed them to improve on the next day's play.

"We had our meeting after the first and second rounds, and we were just going to play as well as we could. We just basically set a goal for ourselves to move up as far as we could. We couldn't be afraid to shoot good numbers," Greg Pieczynski said.

The 14-team tournament got off to a respectable start for the Lions. Led by Pieczynski's even-par score of 71, the team shot a first round 296, putting it into a tie for seventh place with Eastern Kentucky University.

The Lions fared even better in the second round. The rust of a month's break started to wear off, and Jason Pannone and Ted Neville both shaved four strokes off their first rounds of 77. Marco Poccia led the team in this round with a score of 72, while Mark Leon, Neville, and Pannone all came off the course with scores of 73.

But it was the third round that helped the team jump up a place in the final standings. Poccia shot a 1-under-71, and Leon and Pieczynski also performed well, breaking even at 71.

"Our first round really hurt us, but we improved upon last year. This year, if we have a bad day, we try to hang in there and get the best out of there that we can," Pieczynski said.