Freshmen seldom lead their teams into the postseason -- but Tuesday night at Jeffrey Field, it was easy to witness a pair of exceptions at goalkeeper.

The Penn State men's soccer team had rookie phenom Conrad Taylor in net, while Tulsa had 6-foot-6 freshman Dominic Cervi set between the pipes.

"Conrad is a top-class goalkeeper and I think he's proven that," Nittany Lions coach Barry Gorman said. "The Tulsa kid looks like a good prospect as well.

"He certainly came up big in the penalty kicks."

Cervi recorded two saves in the shootout to help his team squeak past Penn State and advance to the third round of the NCAA Tournament -- effectively ending the Lions' season.

According to Gorman, Cervi has a tendency to simply guess where the ball is going during a shootout. Taylor, on the other hand, "plays it up straight" and reacts when the ball is struck.

Luckily for Tulsa -- and unfortunately for Penn State -- Cervi correctly guessed on two occasions.

The goalies' two distinct playing styles in shootout soccer aren't the only differences, however.

Cervi is a full 10 inches taller than Taylor. And while Penn State's goalkeeper might be more highly touted, Cervi certainly got the job done in the matchup against the Lions -- even if he was a bit indecisive at times.

"In all honesty, he didn't have his best game throughout 110 minutes," Tulsa coach Tom McIntosh said.

Cervi was slow to get rid of the ball and made numerous errant passes out of the box. But McIntosh stressed the "110 minutes" because Cervi came on strongly during the penalty kicks.

This was Taylor's first collegiate penalty kick shootout, but it was a road that Cervi had been down just two weeks ago.

Against Creighton in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament semifinals, the Golden Hurricane substituted Cervi at goalkeeper after two overtimes yielded a 1-1 draw. Cervi utilized his tall stature and long arms to make two crucial saves in the shootout to clinch the victory.

The Golden Hurricane goalkeeper also experienced a bit of déjà vu against the Lions, as he added another pair of vital shootout saves to his repertoire.

"Obviously in the PKs, he reads them exceptionally well," McIntosh said.

"He's long, he's pretty quick and he's very difficult [to score on]."

Still, Taylor wasn't convinced that Cervi's height was necessarily an advantage.

"When you're tall, it's hard to get down lower," he said.

"I think he might cover more of the goal, but it's harder to cover the bottom half."

According to Taylor, though, PKs were something the Lions worked on a lot in practice.

Taylor said he was able to stop roughly one out of every five. But even if that average was the case Tuesday, Penn State still wouldn't have been able to overcome Cervi's two diving saves.

"It's one of those things," Gorman said.

"There has to be a winner. If we had won, people would be asking 'Is it better to go with a smaller, faster goalkeeper?'

"It's more of a disappointment that we had to get to that stage."

Although Taylor was unable to better Tulsa in the shootout, that didn't prevent him from garnering several accolades during the season.

He earned five Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors, was named to the conference's All-Freshman team and was even listed as one of the "Top 100 Freshman to Keep an Eye on" by College Soccer News.