Every soccer team from the Under-8 Suburbia Warriors to Real Madrid has a highly regimented pre-game routine.

It just so happens that both the Penn State men's soccer team and the Bucknell Bison both play keepaway. No earth shattering revelation there, a lot of teams do it.

But as the Nittany Lion's starters sprinted, sweated, cursed and badgered each other through five to 10 intense minutes of their routine, and the Bison lackadaisically circulated a ball through theirs, one couldn't help but wander if it was a sign of things to come.

Turns out it was.

Last night, Penn State outworked, outhustled, outplayed, and most importantly outscored, a thoroughly overmatched Bucknell squad 2-0 in a non-conference match at Jeffrey Field.

The game was a must win for a Penn State squad that appeared to be sleepwalking in last Sunday's loss to Ohio State and had gone 1-3-2 in its last six games.

"I think we were pretty energetic tonight," center midfielder Brian Devlin said. "We possessed the ball probably 90 percent of the game. The loss kind of hurt us and we wanted to redeem ourselves a little bit."

Even though the victory was against a much weaker squad, the Lions still played with impressive intensity and aggression, and the game was an excellent chance for them to get back on track heading into Sunday's matchup against Michigan State.

The Lions came out firing early in the game and turned their high energy level into a number of excellent chances that tested Bucknell's inexperienced keeper Joey Kuterbach, who had been named started prior to the game.

Yet the Lions were unable to capitalize on those chances and, as the game crawled into the second half still scoreless, Penn State's frustration became obvious.

Penn State coach Barry Gorman even gave minutes to young, rarely used forwards Brian Tully and Yan Carvalho, searching for a spark.

Yet, in the end, it was two of the Lions more experienced players who broke the tie when Chad Severs hit Devlin with a beautiful pass that the diminutive junior pounded into the top corner.

"That was a quote-unquote power shot," Penn State captain David Walters said with a laugh. "That's the hardest Sushi [Devlin] has ever hit a ball in his life."

Less than eight minutes later, Severs notched his ninth goal of the season and the 38th of his career, which moved him into sole possession of the No. 9 spot on Penn State's career goals list to put the game out of reach.

"It's great to be in the record books at Penn State, I mean that's my job, I've got to score goals. But I'm not really looking at that right now. I'm looking at putting wins on the board and winning championships," Severs said.

The two goals were more than enough against a Bucknell squad that generated very little offense all night. The Bison often had all 11 players in the defensive end and were obviously playing for the tie, but Gorman still thought the offense had room for improvement.

"We're not playing with urgency, we're not playing with commitment up front," he said. "You know we've talked about this in practice. They have to understand that teams aren't going to come in here and play wide-open soccer."

Some of Gorman's ire seemed to be directed at sophomore Simon Omekanda who seemed indecisive in front of the net throughout the evening and was on the bench for long stretches in the second half. But it was not just Omekanda who seemed gun shy at times, as numerous Lions passed up seemingly open shots throughout the game.

Walters was obviously happy with the win, but agreed that the team could have scored more goals.

"I think we have to just get everything together," he said. "We came out with intensity but we forgot to shoot, and obviously you're not going to score if you don't shoot."