Syracuse, N.Y. – Jeff Tambroni was driving home from the 2010 men’s lacrosse final four with his family when he got a call that would change the course of his life.

Tambroni starred at West Genesee and Hobart before beginning a coaching career that culminated with the top job at Cornell. He guided his Big Red to two straight final fours, stamping an imprint on a tradition-rich program located in fertile recruiting territory. But now, the Penn State athletic director was on the phone. Would Tambroni be interested in the vacant position in Happy Valley?

Tambroni initially demurred. He was happy in Ithaca. His extended family lived in Central New York, affording his lacrosse-invested dad the opportunity to take the quick trip to Cornell to see every game and providing his parents easy access to his three daughters. He had considered Cornell a “dream job,” when it was bestowed upon him in 2001. He loved the Cornell campus, its academic pedigree. He thought he’d never leave.

But Penn State persisted and after several conversations, Tambroni began to wonder, began to consider what might await at Penn State. His wife, Michelle, had been an All-American field hockey player there. She had roots in the community and a deep fondness for the school. And what of the Nittany Lions’ athletic name recognition, the vast physical and financial resources it commanded? What Penn State lacked in lacrosse lore, it balanced with promise and potential.

“I think Jeff was looking for something maybe that wasn’t as mainstream, where he can go and build it his way or in a fashion that was representative of him and his roots,” said Dave Pietramala, the Johns Hopkins coach who hired Tambroni as his assistant at Cornell and has remained close with him. “And there was this place that I think he looked at like a big piece of clay. He could get out of the rat race, so to speak, and go to this quaint, quiet place and take this big ball of clay and mold it into something he thought could be something pretty special.”

Tambroni did just that. And now, nine years after departing Central New York and all he knew for Penn State and its inherent mysteries, Tambroni will bring his No. 1 team into the NCAA lacrosse quarterfinals Sunday at noon when Penn State plays Loyola for a chance to reach its first final four.

The top-seeded Nittany Lions are 15-1, their only loss a one-goal defeat to defending national champion Yale. Tambroni has fashioned the nation’s best, most thrilling offense, its 17.81 goals per game indicative of the unique style he employs and the players he has accumulated to fit his scoring vision.

“I think he’s looked at as one of the best coaches out there,” said Paul Carcaterra, the former Syracuse star and a longtime lacrosse television commentator. “He’s always been an offensive-minded coach and when his system is churning, it’s churning. When he has some star power, his teams are more dangerous than most if not all. That’s a result of him identifying some great kids and seeing those types of players for what they do and how they fit into his system. It’s like the perfect storm for him right now.”

Tambroni will be the first to admit the “perfect storm” was preceded by the hurricane of the Jerry Sandusky spectacle and the slow drip of change. The swirl of the Sandusky child sexual assault scandal engulfed every coach on the Penn State campus. Tambroni, newly arrived at Penn State when the case broke in 2011, acknowledged recruiting “took a major hit” because of it.

There was a shift to a different league, depriving Penn State of a potential automatic NCAA Tournament bid when the program needed tangible validation. There was more heartache. At Cornell, Tambroni shepherded his team through the 2004 tragedy of George Boiardi, a senior captain who died on the lacrosse field during a game after taking a ball to the chest. Tambroni still grieves for Boiardi. He watched a tribute video to his former player last Saturday, before Penn State played UMBC in its first-round NCAA Tournament game.

Then, in the summer of 2015, weeks after he’d finished his Penn State career, goalie Connor Darcey died in a car crash.

Such unspeakable sadness deepened Tambroni’s relationships with his players and provided perspective on how shared emotion and deep fondness could shape a team.

Through all of that, Tambroni began building a culture, convincing a community that lacrosse mattered. He is respectful of the regime that preceded him, but he is candid enough to acknowledge the lack of alumni connection, the lack of lacrosse interest in general when he first arrived in State College. He missed the casual conversations with lacrosse-savvy people he encountered in Central New York. He remembers gazing into the stands during the final game of his first season and vowing to change what he observed.

West Genesee's Jeff Tambroni, right, drives against Henninger's Ed Cox (34). Syracuse Post-StandardSyracuse Post-Standard

“It was a league game on our home field and there were probably 300-400 people there,” he said. “You knew you were in a completely different environment. The building process was real at that point. I remember looking over to our assistant coaches and saying ‘some day we’re going to fill this place, we’re going to create an environment where the sport of lacrosse is important.’ And it took awhile, but we held tightly onto that dream.”

He competed against the sport’s blue bloods for talent and at first, his pitch of pioneering a new movement at Penn State helped secure adventurous, curious players. But when the winning didn’t immediately translate, Tambroni had some explaining to do. Despite the resources, despite Penn State’s broad athletic reach, Tambroni faced the same challenges every college lacrosse coach encounters – competing for athletes in such diverse emerging pockets of talent as Texas and Colorado and California and Florida, in a sport that continues to afford gifted kids more college destinations.

Carcaterra said Penn State’s rise coincides with the steep stockpile of players in Philadelphia and Tambroni’s success in keeping that talent in Pennsylvania. Penn State’s first-ever Tewaaraton Trophy finalist, Grant Ament, hails from suburban Philadelphia.

“The Philly area is probably a top three hotbed for high school lacrosse stars,” Carcaterra said. “And in Tambroni’s first few years, he wasn’t really keeping those guys at home. This year, one of the Tewaaraton front-runners is a Philadelphia kid named Grant Ament who plays for Penn State. If he can win and capitalize on the momentum he’s building he’s going to have a much better opportunity to keep those kids in state.”

Carcaterra and Pietramala point to Tambroni’s innovation on offense, his ability to invent new scoring philosophies as testaments to his tactical reputation. Pietramala, a defensive All-American at Hopkins during his playing days, game-planned for Tambroni’s teams twice this season. Penn State’s constant movement, its stick work, its daring – all of that impressed Pietramala.

“Quite frankly, I think this group is truly a reflection of how Jeff wants to play the game,” Pietramala said. “What they do offensively – it’s a huge hybrid between field and box lacrosse. His team offensively is not very big. But they’re quick, fast and tough. And they are skilled. They play so well in tight quarters and that reminds me of box lacrosse. He’s provided them with the confidence and the freedom to throw the ball into spaces that most teams haven’t or wouldn’t encourage. That’s box lacrosse at its best. Yet, he’ll spread you out, he’ll use the space of the field. He’ll play through X. I think he’s found that hybrid he’s been looking for between the box skill set he loves so much and the spacing and the usage of the field.”

Carcaterra visited Penn State recently to get a feel for the nation’s No. 1 team, to learn more about the coach that guides the Nittany Lions. He watched Tambroni’s team run the half mile to their stadium each day, cleats in hand, to begin and end practices. When he asked players what might happen if they walked to practice, they seemed bewildered. Nobody does that, they told him. He watched Tambroni, now 49, attack the weight room at lunch time “just crushing himself.” He saw the competitive burn.

“He’s a high-energy guy,” Carcaterra said. “He’s known as a tireless recruiter. He’s on the road a lot. He’s got the work ethic. He’s got the energy.”

Pietramala talks about Tambroni’s process, his attention to detail, his respect for the West Genesee roots that shaped his lacrosse philosophy. He preaches discipline and sacrifice. He emphasizes stick work. But what Pietramala really appreciates about Tambroni is his trustworthiness, his honesty. Those traits, he believes, say everything about him.

“When I think of Jeff, I think of the World War II generation. There were such decent, hardworking, strong, tough men and that’s how I would describe him,” Pietramala said. “We live in world where decency is so lost. Common decency, human decency – there’s so little of it. And yet, here is a guy who is a really decent guy. He’s a good guy. He’s an honest guy. He’s a fair guy.”

Penn State head coach Jeff Tambroni with his family after the Nittany Lions defeated Rutgers 14-13 to win the program's first Big Ten title on Saturday afternoon April 27, 2019 at Panzer Stadium on Senior Day. From left: Daughter Ella; wife Michelle; Tambroni; his in-laws, Yvonne and Norm; daughter Madison. Photo by Mark Selders | Penn State AthleticsMark Selders

He is also the coach of the nation’s best college lacrosse team.

This year, Penn State is winning at unprecedented levels. Tambroni refuses to say his program has turned some proverbial corner. He understands too well the mercurial nature of college athletics to proclaim that Penn State has “arrived.”

But he has appreciated and savored the milestones along the way. His teams had never beaten Maryland or Johns Hopkins. Then, they had. They had never won an NCAA Tournament game. Last weekend, they did.

Penn State has a new lacrosse facility and people are filling it to see what Tambroni and his staff are building. It’s been nine sometimes long, sometimes challenging years since Tambroni left Cornell to lend shape to a big ball of lacrosse clay. But he has sculpted a program perched on the precipice of a national title. And people are paying attention.

“That’s the essence. It’s a journey,” he said. “There were times when I thought I was going to come down here and it was going to happen a lot earlier. But I think the beauty of any journey is the trials and tribulations, the obstacles you find along the way. If you believe hard enough and long enough and surround yourself with the right people then that belief is going to come true."