Once again it all came down to the last few seconds for the No. 13 Penn State women's lacrosse team.

But this time it wasn't Penn State who would walk away with the win. No. 4 Princeton won 10-9 against the Nittany Lions in Saturday's contest held in New Jersey.

"Our game plan was to go out there and keep the ball," Penn State coach Suzanne Weinberg said.

"But they went up 3-0. That wasn't in our game plan."

But the Lions didn't let the Tigers stay up for long. They came back scoring the next three goals to tie the game at 3-3. Kate Affonsa had the first goal of the game, and Colleen O'Hara netted the next two.

The Tigers weren't happy about that, and came back scoring five more goals of their own to take the 8-4 lead into half time.

Something hit Penn State coming out of the locker room however, and it went on a rampage scoring five goals in a row to take the lead 9-8 with 9:34 left in the game.

"It was absolutely unbelievable," Stacey Sagesse said.

"Our energy level was somewhere it has never been before."

The Lions defense held Princeton scoreless for the next eight minutes. But with 1:24 left in the game, Princeton's Kim Smith scored to tie the game.

And then with 15.6 seconds left, Smith managed to score again.

But the Lions weren't giving up. A turnover and foul by Princeton gave Penn State the ball and the shot on goal. As the buzzer went, B.J. Lucey shot and the ball went in the net. But, the goal was disallowed because time had already expired.

"We played with a ton of emotion but we also played smart," Weinberg said.

Penn State went into Saturday's game hoping to improve its scoring percentage and it did. Of the 22 shots the Lions took on goal, nine went in.

"We did a much better job," Weinberg said. "We shot much better, we had a couple of posts. We kept possession and kept time off the clock."

Penn State also played the game without three of its top players.

Both Molly Ford and Alyson Shand were out due to injuries and Melissa MacRone was removed from the game after receiving a red card.

Weinberg commended goalkeeper Megan Ames on her performance throughout the game.

Ames recorded six ground balls and 10 saves for the day.

Penn State, which is now 3-4, will look to improve its record Friday when it takes on Maryland. The Terps are currently 8-0 for the season.

"Just to know we almost knocked off the No. 4 team in the nation, that's huge for us," Sagesse said.

"We are going to go in more fired up from this game into Maryland."