After defeating Temple 6-3 to start off their season Saturday, the Lady Lion tennis team was hoping to make it two in a row yesterday.

But Illinois had other plans for its matchup at the Penn State Tennis Center.

Penn State (1-1, 0-1 Big Ten) was dominated by Illinois (1-2, 1-0) and lost all nine matches. The Lady Lions won only one game all day, courtesy of the No. 1 doubles team of Olga Novikova and Tricia Lehman, who eventually lost to Kristen Jones and Camille Baldrich in the most spirited match of the day.

Coach Sue Whiteside was reluctant to blame yesterday's performance on back-to-back meets.

"It shouldn't have -- that was the basic format for the season," she said. "We've been working hard and doing a lot of conditioning."

Whiteside also said playing on consecutive days all the time should help prepare the team for its tough Big Ten schedule. If Illinois is representative of conference depth, it will be very tough.

"We knew that (Illinois was) a ranked team and that we were up against tough competition," Whiteside said.

Early in the meet, Novikova played hard against Illinois' Jones in the No. 1 singles match before losing 6-3, 6-4. Penn State also lost the second and third singles matches. Lehman fell to the hard-hitting Baldrich (6-2, 6-1) and Kellie Murphy was ousted by Susanne Land (6-1,6-2).

"Once they saw they were down, they felt down and out," Whiteside said. "We've seen what we'll be up against in the Big Ten with back to back matches of high intensity. We've got to increase the intensity."

Assistant Coach Doug Collins said there was a confidence problem in that the players were afraid of making mistakes. Whiteside agreed.

"When you don't have a lot of wins under your belt, you may be thinking of trying to make shots instead of playing instinctively," she said. "It's the beginning of the season, and there's things we can improve on."

Also impressing the coaches was junior Shannon Etzweiler who stepped into play on the No. 3 doubles team along side of junior Kim Nelson.

"I thought I played good, I was ready to play," Etzweiler said. "We were looking for an upset, so we were disappointed overall."

Whiteside said she is planning plenty of hard work for her team.

"We need to do some fine tuning," she said. "If certain aspects of your game are solid, you can challenge anyone."