The Penn State men's lacrosse coaches have known all season who they wanted as their starting three attackers -- three players that, when they were all on the field together, would light their offense on fire.

However, with each passing week of the season, something new stood in the way of them getting their wish.

For the first two weeks, senior Brian Boyle had to sit on the sidelines. Boyle had been the team's leading scorer last year, but all he could do for the first two games of this season was nurse an injury to his medial collateral ligament while his team suffered losses to Denver and Notre Dame.

Just before Boyle was ready to take the field again, a fellow attacker, redshirt sophomore Max VanArsdale, suffered a bruised left rib, which kept him on the sidelines in the team's loss to Loyola.

In Saturday's game against then-No. 12 Fairfield, however, both Boyle and VanArsdale were ready join up with Penn State's other attacker, sophomore Rob Forster, to complete the attack unit that the team's coaches had been dreaming about all season. It would be the first time in 2007 that all three would step onto the field at the same time.

They didn't disappoint.

All three scored at least one goal and had at least one assist in the Lions' 10-7 win Saturday -- the first time since last season that the Lions' attackers have done so. Having contributions from all three attackers, Penn State head coach Glenn Thiel said, made a big difference for the Lions in getting their second win in a row.

"[On] offense, it's just a matter of personnel," Thiel said. "We're just a little deeper, a little more talented. It's just getting the right people on the field."

Forster, who had one goal and one assist in the game, has been the one constant in the team's attack. He's started every game this season alongside a different cast almost every week. Forster said yesterday that he was glad to finally have the chance to play next to Boyle and VanArsdale.

"Brian and Max -- we mesh together the best," Forster said. "We're used to working together."

Boyle attributes the team's wins in each of the last two games to a few different factors. Having the complete attack unit is part of it, he said, but making fewer mistakes has also been important.

"We've been practicing a lot of handling the ball a lot better," Boyle said.

Forster said that, at practice this week, the three would focus on getting their timing down as a unit and getting more accustomed to one another. Even though the team started out the season 0-4, Forster's outlook for the rest of the season is a positive one.

"Expectations are pretty high now," he said.

"Injuries kind of plagued us. [Now], everyone's back to their normal positions."

Notes

The Lions' game against Stony Brook, originally scheduled for March 17, still hasn't been rescheduled.

At Monday's practice, Thiel said that it's going to be "tough" to find a new time to play the game.

"[We will] look into it, see what happens," Thiel said.

He added that the task of rescheduling would be made even more difficult because Stony Brook's conference, America East, has a championship tournament at the end of the season.

The game was originally postponed because of the large snowfall in the northeast.