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Opening day of the 2026 NCAA Division I men's lacrosse season is Jan. 31.
Throughout the month of January, we'll pose three burning questions for each team ranked in the USA Lacrosse Division I Men's Preseason Top 20, presented by CWENCH Hydration, starting with No. 20 Michigan and finishing with No. 1 Maryland.
Join the conversation on social media @USALMag (IG/X/FB). Wrong answers only.
Penn State aims to make the NCAA tournament for the fourth season in a row under head coach Jeff Tambroni after falling to eventual national champion Cornell in the national semifinals last season.
The 2024 season marked the first time Penn State earned back-to-back NCAA tournament bids under Tambroni before he extended that streak another year in May. Outside of Tambroni’s high-powered 2019 squad that finished 16-2, it seems like he and his staff have hit their stride lately after only compiling seven combined wins from 2021-22.
The Nittany Lions did lose star attackman Matt Traynor to graduation, but Tambroni is no stranger to losing a potent goal scorer having lost Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year TJ Malone the year before and several others in the past.
Still, the Nittany Lions return four of their seven 30-point scorers from last season on top of a few notable transfers. Will 2026 mark a fourth straight NCAA tournament berth? Penn State will have to answer some other questions first.
This is the glaring question that Penn State needs to answer. It may sound cliché for a head coach to say this, but for Tambroni, replacing an elite-level scorer is more about culture than immediately finding another rare talent.
“You’re not replacing quote-unquote talent,” Tambroni said. “You’re replacing leadership, you’re replacing presence. So, I think our guys have done a really good job just naturally progressing.”
He didn’t dismiss the fact that some younger players will need to step up in light of Traynor’s absence. He mentioned junior attackman Kyle Lehman and sophomore midfielder Hunter Aquino as two scorers capable of filling that void. Lehman has notched 40 goals and 17 assists in his two seasons and started 15 games last year.
Aquino, a consensus top-10 recruit and left-handed sharpshooter, could be poised for a breakout season. The 6-foot-5 standout athlete is also an intriguing threat out of the midfield. He tied for second on the team with 37 points last season and showed that he’s a quality distributor from the top of the key.
Redshirt-sophomore attackman Liam Matthews is another name to watch. The Canadian is a pesky off-ball presence for defenders and led Penn State with four goals during the national semifinal.
Even with some losses, the Nittany Lions have a charcuterie board of scorers who can step up.
It’s daunting, but super exciting.
Jeff Tambroni on Penn State's difficult 2026 schedule
Losing All-American goalie Jack Fracyon to graduation is arguably just as big a loss as Traynor. Fracyon started every game over the past three seasons. He finished his career with a 54-percent save efficiency and allowed less than 10 goals per game over the past two seasons.
But who steps up without him there?
Redshirt sophomore Ben Johnson is the only goalie on the roster who has regular-season action under his belt. He’s accumulated five saves in five appearances after substituting in for Fracyon during a few blowout wins. Tambroni mentioned redshirt freshman Hayes Schreiner as another name to watch in the goalie battle on top of freshman Preston Hawkins, who he said has “impressed at moments.”
Tambroni said he and his staff will continue to evaluate those three goalies through January, and they will likely make a decision after their scrimmages against Loyola and Army.
It might be easy to write Penn State off after losing an All-American goal scorer and netminder, but the Nittany Lions certainly have the offensive talent to soften at least one of those blows. Defensively, Penn State graduated a leader in Kevin Parham but returned two starting close defensemen and a plethora of defensive midfielders.
Long-stick midfielder Ryan O’Connor is one of them and will wear the honorable No. 16 this season. Penn State also brings back junior faceoff specialist Colby Baldwin, who won 58 percent of his battles at the X last season. If the Nittany Lions can figure things out in the cage, they have the offensive and defensive talent to get back to championship weekend.
Penn State will also be playing championship-caliber programs throughout the spring, including a trip to Princeton on Feb. 14. Tamborni, and the rest of the country, will find out a lot about the Nittany Lions after that result.
“It’s daunting, but super exciting,” Tambroni said. “And I think that’s part of the reason why [recruits] come to Penn State. There’s never a weekend that you're going to feel like you’re going to have an opportunity to really dip or take a weekend off.”
Hayden Hundley has been involved with lacrosse since he was 6 years old and was brought on as Editorial Intern at USA Lacrosse in May 2025. He has covered Virginia men’s lacrosse with Streaking the Lawn, scouted DMV talent with Prep Lacrosse and was formerly the Sports Editor for James Madison’s student newspaper "The Breeze."
