There are times where it seems like your team is just stuck in a rut.

It seems like you're not playing badly, but you're still not where you want to be.

The Penn State men's golf team may have finally pulled itself out of its rut yesterday at the Memphis Intercollegiate.

The team shot a 20-over par and finished in a tie for fourth out of 15 in the toughest field it's had to play thus far.

"I think we're finally getting into the swing of things," starter Robert Rohanna said. "We're starting to get used to it."

Rohanna's been in the swing of things all season, finishing in the top 11 in all of his tournaments thus far. He finished even par and in a tie for 5th yesterday.

The difference is his team played up to the level that it's been expecting all season long. The team played this tournament last year and improved on that performance this time around.

"Last year we finished 10th; this year we managed to finish a lot higher," Rohanna said. "We're playing better. We look forward to next week."

Part of the reason that the team played well was it got away from the mistakes that basically gave away tournaments in the past.

"We played smart this tournament and didn't throw shots away," captain Greg Pieczynski said. "We kept the ball in play and didn't make big numbers."

Pieczynski put up the smallest number of the tournament. He shot a hole-in-one in the final round on the par-3 5th, and finished tied for 30th with a 7-over par.

One of the reasons that Penn State was able to get its first top 5 finish was due to the production that it has so sorely missed from the bottom of the lineup.

Marco Poccia finished in a tie for 30th, and Harvin Groft finished in a tie for 33rd with an 8-over par. True freshman Chad Bricker finished his second tournament ever tied for 54th with a 15-over par.

"[The bottom of the lineup] did pretty well, all of us still need to improve a lot, though, "Pieczynski said. "There's still room for improvement but we made a nice step forward with a good field."

That good field included solid Big Ten teams in Iowa and Michigan. Both teams bettered Penn State at the Wolverine Invitational.

This time around Iowa tied Penn State for fourth, and Michigan could only muster a 9th place showing.

Wisconsin, who has been getting dominated early in the season, finished in a much-improved third this time around.

This tournament looks like a step in the right direction, but the team would be foolish to think that there isn't room for improvement.

"We have to improve on our putting," Pieczynski said. "We don't have putting facilities here at Penn State so we kind of handicap ourselves. We're getting there, though."