Following a shut out loss at Wisconsin and with the final weeks of its season looming, the Penn State men's soccer team was looking for something, anything, to spark an offensive explosion. It was backed into a corner.

Apparently, that's right where it needed to be.

Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was the rated "M" for mature halftime speech from head coach Barry Gorman. Whatever it was, in last night's 3-1 win over Bucknell, the Nittany Lions suddenly felt right at home in the corner.

Through Sunday, the Penn State offense was scoring at a hideous rate of .000 on corner kicks.

Last night, it might as well have batted 1.000, burying three balls, all of them off second-half corner kicks, behind a stunned, and seemingly helpless, Bison defense.

After the game, defensemen David Gray and Geordie MacNeill, who scored their first goals of the season, laughed about the sudden corner kick prowess.

"That felt pretty good to get that one," Gray said, "but I just thought it was ironic because the article in the Collegian [yesterday] was about how we don't score on corner kicks."

Gray was referring to Tuesday's Collegian article highlighting the team's previous lack of production on set pieces.

Asked about the corner kick success, Jeff Chambers was blunt.

"It was the article," he said half-jokingly.

The Lions seemingly wanted to silence the critic.

After a first half in which they appeared to outplay, but somehow not outscore, the Bison, they woke up after what amounted to a verbal slap in the face from Gorman at halftime.

The ball spent most of the second stanza on the offensive half of the field, flying in and out of the goal box. Bison goalkeeper Joey Kuterbach saw seven shots on goal in the second half, after only three in the first.

The Lions' first goal was set-up and finished by the seldom-scoring David Gray. After playing a ball off a Bison defender and out of play, Gray deftly headed the ensuing corner from Chris Germani past Kuterbach to tie the game.

Gray, mauled by his teammates immediately following the score, was understandably excited by his first points of 2006. "It's always nice to get your fame and glory," he said after the game, laughing.

After 20 minutes of a tied game, MacNeill nailed the game winner. Not to be bested by his defensive partner, MacNeill outjumped a group of defenders in orange and redirected a high serve from Jeff Chambers into the back of the net.

"You want to contribute any way you can," MacNeill said, "so if it's through scoring, getting up there and challenging for headers, you do whatever you can."

Bucknell couldn't put together any kind of a response after that, letting the boys in white score on another corner less than 10 minutes later when Grady Renfrow played a corner kick to Daniel Martini at the top of the box, drawing Kuterbach out of position.

Martini quickly snuck the ball through the crowd in front of the net to Simon Omekanda, who added to his team-leading goal total of four, deftly redirecting the ball inside the far post.

Gorman has emphasized the importance of set pieces all year, especially for an offense as injury depleted as his.

"The service was good," he said, "and after so many, you've got to get one sometime."