After two weeks of hosting hundreds of athletes and not being able to compete as a squad, the Penn State men's track and field team will get a chance to fuel its competitive fire this weekend.

And Harry Groves couldn't be happier.

The Penn State men's track and field coach will be leading his the Lions into a scored tri-meet against Connecticut and Princeton at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow morning at the Multi-Sport Facility.

"Scoring meets are important for the future of our sport," Groves said. "They add more competition and allow the average fan to focus solely on who beat who."

Tomorrow will be a change of pace for the Nittany Lions. With a much smaller field, the tri-meet will be a little less hectic than last weekend, but the competition will still be top notch. Groves feels his team must perform at a high level to succeed.

"We're just going to have to scrap our socks off to beat them if we can," he said.

He also mentioned that the NCAA scoring method, keeping only the top two performances in each event, should keep the meet close and competitive.

This yearly tri-meet began in 1998, and Penn State has come out on top four times along with one tie.

Every year the scores have been close, with only five or 10 points separating the first- and second-place teams.

On the track, Princeton brings a very talented group of distance runners. The Tigers return two runners who qualified for the NCAA cross country championships, David Nightingale and Frank McCreery. McCreery also earned All-America honors at the championships. Miler James O'Toole has run two sub-4:15 races so far this indoor season.

When asked about this weekend's competition, Penn State distance runner Chris Nirschel mentioned the quality of Princeton's runners.

"They definitely have some pretty good distance guys. I'm just going to try get in there and gut it out," he said. "They had a really strong team for cross country, but I feel we've definitely made some real progress to be able to run with them."

UConn also boasts quality and depth. The Huskies dominated their first team-scoring event this season. At the Sorlein Memorial Invitational, UConn dominated second place Brown 205.5-109. Their distance runners and performances in the field events lead the team.

As far as Penn State's field events, throwing coach Mark Gottdenker was pleased with the performance by the throwers at last weekend's National. He said he realizes this will only be their third competition and the throwers are still getting adjusted to competing.

"They're still trying to tap into their competitive nature," Gottdenker said, "They may have taken 7 or 800,000 throws in practice, but until you put them in their uniform, in the circle, with the crowd going it really isn't the same thing."