On Friday night, the No. 2 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers slowly and silently filed into their locker room after their game with Drexel.

It wasn't easy to tell they had just won.

During its alumni weekend, Penn State (27-1-4, 16-0-0 ESCHL) defeated the Drexel Dragons (6-18-2, 3-12-1) Friday and Saturday by the scores of 2-1 and 8-0, respectively, to seal the inaugural regular season ESCHL title. The Icers will be the No. 1 seed and have a first-round bye in the ESCHL playoffs on Feb. 15 and 16.

Icers coach Scott Balboni said he was glad to get the win, but Friday night's game was one of the poorest his team has played this season.

"We didn't come ready to play," he said. "We made an awful lot of mistakes and a lot of guys had their worst mental game of the year tonight."

The Icers came out unfocused on Friday night, consistently making sloppy passes, turning the puck over and whiffing on many of their plentiful scoring opportunities. Drexel's senior goalie Jason Mardinly locked down the net and stopped 40 of Penn State's 42 shots.

"Their defense did a good job of packing it in tight and just gave us outside shots on goal," Balboni said. "The goalie did a great job of shutting us down and not giving up rebounds."

Mardinly's play was most obvious in the final minutes of the game when Penn State senior forward Luke DeLorenzo broke away with the puck, only to have his shot robbed by an acrobatic glove save in front of the upper right-hand corner of the net. The save kept the score at 2-1 and kept the Dragons in the game late.

Drexel coach Gregg Marinari said his team could not keep up with Penn State because of its depth. The Dragons had only 15 players on their bench and the size and speed of Penn State's players wore them down. Their concentration was to frustrate the Icers by keeping their scoring low. Marinari said even though they lost, they achieved their game plan.

"We dropped back five guys in our zone and played solid defense, which is what we tried to do," he said.

"It all worked according to plan, except we sacrificed offense and only put one goal on the board."

Saturday's game was a stark contrast of Friday's for the Icers. They skated with better speed while making quick and precise passes and shots on goal.

They registered 54 shots and scored on eight of them. Defensively, they held Drexel to seven shots for the night and 22 for the weekend overall.

DeLorenzo, who led the Icers with two goals and two assists for the weekend, was smiling on the ice with many of his teammates after Saturday's game. He said it was because of the alumni weekend atmosphere, not winning the title.

"It's a good thing to win, but it's not the most important thing," he said. "We're after bigger stuff."

He added that Friday night's game was a wake-up call for his teammates and it reminded them to take nothing for granted.