The Penn State women's basketball team will get another chance to beat a ranked team tonight.

The No. 21 Lady Lions will travel to Norfolk, Va., to take on No. 23 Old Dominion at 7:35 p.m. It will be the second time the Lions will have faced a top 25 team this season. The Lions played No. 5 Stanford earlier in the year.

The game against the Cardinal did not go quite the way the Lions would have liked, as Penn State lost 90-68 in the finals of the Rainbow/Wahine Classic championship game. In that game the Lions showed their youth by shooting at a 31.3-percent clip from the field.

Penn State head coach Rene Portland knows that it is important for her team to come away with a win over a ranked team.

"We fell short against Stanford and they were top 10 so we have to attack the next grouping of top 25 and both of these teams fit right in there," Portland said.

Old Dominion is a team with rich tradition. It has won three national titles and has hosted two Final Fours. They have had many outstanding athletes including Nancy Lieberman-Cline, a National Basketball Hall of Fame member.

Like past teams, this year's version of the Monarchs has high expectations. They are only 2-3, but two of those losses have come against ranked opponents. Portland knows her team will have to play at its best if they are to beat the Monarchs.

"(Okeisha) Howard and (Sharron) Francis are great three-point shooters from ODU that we have to be concerned about," Portland said. "On our side we have to be ready to adjust and not to let them get comfortable, so we have to change things up."

Tonight's game will be important for the obvious reasons, but it will be a little more special for sophomore captain Kelly Mazzante. Mazzante's brother Louis is a junior baseball player at Old Dominion and he will be in attendance at the game.

"I am very excited about his game," Mazzante said.

"I get to see him and my parents, not that I don't get to see my parents at every game here."

What also makes this game more unique for Mazzante is that the Monarchs were the first team that she ever played against at the collegiate level. She hopes that this game will go better than the first she played against them.

"ODU was my first college game ever," Mazzante said. "I just didn't want to screw up and I still did. It was such a blur because it was my first game."

Mazzante still scored 14 points in 16 minutes during that 99-72 victory for the Lions. That game came early last season when Mazzante was still getting acclimated to the college game.

Now as a captain and a leader Mazzante will try to guide the Lions to the win over the women's basketball powerhouse.