Women's lacrosse coach Julie Williams wants her defense to force the other team to pass.

"Every time you make them pass, there's a better chance of a mistake," she said.

The Penn State defense forced Colgate to pass and make mistakes in the first half yesterday, but the Lady Lions needed to stop two Colgate comeback attempts in the second half to win, 11-9.

"We were very sloppy -- we worked at their level of skill," attack Faith Sweeney said. "If we'd played like that against Loyola, we would have lost in a heartbeat."

In the first half the Lady Lions held national scoring leader Shari Krasnoo scoreless except for an assist, but in the second Krasnoo added four goals and another assist.

"That's disappointing -- knowing that they can do it in the first half, and then going away from what they know works," Williams said. "They think it can't work the whole game, and it could have."

During the first half, the Lady Lions held their body positioning and double teamed Krasnoo without checking her, forcing Krasnoo to pass to the open player.

"I played pretty terrible in the first half," Krasnoo said.

Colgate coach Cathy Foto said Krasnoo's shot selection was poor in the second half; she needed better angles on the goal, and got them in the second half.

In the second half, the Lady Lions got impatient and started to swing at the ball instead of running with the players. When a defensive player missed a check, the offensive player -- usually Krasnoo -- didn't have to pass. Instead she took the ball to the goal herself.

"Their leading scorer gets the ball and they suddenly think 'Oh, she's the top scorer,' and so they think they've got to do something major to get the ball away from her," Williams said. "We contained her fine in the first half, and then a swing and a miss and she goes through you, and a swing and a miss and she goes through you again."

The Lady Lions took a 4-1 lead into halftime on goals by Deanna Blood, Elena Brazer, Megan Smith and Ann Kolongowski. But unranked Colgate, seeing itself so close to the second-ranked Lady Lions, thought it could make up ground in the second half.

Lady Lion Christy Sansone opened the scoring 4:28 into the second half. Five minutes later Colgate scored, and two goals by Alicia Wilson in the next five minutes narrowed the Lady Lions' lead to 5-4.

Two goals by reserve attack Lori Fitzgerald in one minute opened the Penn State lead to 7-4.

Krasnoo scored her first goal with 10:45 remaining in the second half, and four Penn State players scored in the next seven minutes to give Penn State an 11-5 lead.

Krasnoo scored three goals and assisted on another in the last four minutes, making the final 11-9.

Although they lost, the Red Raiders were pleased that they came within two goals of the No. 2 team in the nation.

"No one's ever heard of Colgate University -- we wanted to show that up in upstate New York we can play the game too," Krasnoo said.