The No. 6 Penn State field hockey team is accustomed to playing teams it doesn't know much about.
Usually, Penn State coach Char Morett can make predictions about the game based on how they performed against the team in past years.
But Penn State doesn't have that benefit this time. At 3 p.m. tomorrow, the Lions (9-2, 2-0 Big Ten) will take on Indiana (1-4, 0-1) in the Hoosiers' first year in the NCAA and the Big Ten. The Lions take to the road to play West Chester at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
"We have no idea what to expect because they're a new program within the Big Ten and we're just going to go at it like we normally do and treat it like it's one of our toughest games," junior forward Kiley Kulina said. "It probably will be since we don't know anything about them."
The most Penn State knows about Indiana is that the team was just moved up this year from club team status into the varsity level and because of that, the Hoosiers' are still wet behind the ears.
Indiana coach Amy Robertson took the reigns of the infant program last March after a three-year span as coach at Wake Forest.
Before she began coaching at Wake Forest, the team was struggling to reach the .500 mark. Last season, with Robertson at the helm, the Demon Deacons went 18-4, earned a school-best national ranking of third and a first-ever trip to the NCAA Championship tournament.
Robertson is hoping to achieve the same feats at Indiana, but so far the welcome wagon has not been kind to her or her team.
The Hoosiers started the season 0-4 with losses to Slippery Rock, St. Louis, Miami (Ohio) and No. 5 Michigan. In those four games, Indiana gave up 23 points and didn't score once.
The rough start has not rattled Robertson, however, who braced herself and her team for such a blow. For the moment, Robertson is focusing on the fundamentals and trying to stabilize the team as quickly as possible.
"We plan to take things one step at a time," Robertson said in a press release. "Before we can look at success quantitatively, we have to build a foundation in terms of work ethic and team philosophy."
The Hoosiers managed to pull off a 4-0 win last week, but with their Big Ten schedule kicking in, the road will not going to get easier any time soon. Although the prospect of taking on Penn State probably scares Indiana more than the other way around, the Lions are still not letting their guard down.
"I'm sure Indiana is improving everyday and they get better with every game," Morett. "They're a young team, but they have a good coach, so it's not a game for us to think for a second that it's gonna be easy."
With the success Penn State has had against the highly touted teams of the NCAA, it's probable tomorrow's game will be a repeat of Wednesday night's match up against Temple when the Lions opened up a big lead early and then sent in the younger players.
If the team is expecting that, however, they're not letting on.
"You don't really know," Morett said. "Look at our game with Syracuse where had 26 shots and didn't score until overtime. Some days the shots go in and some days they don't. You just have to play and see what happens."
