From a strong defensive team to a powerful offensive team, the Penn State field hockey team played both this weekend.

No. 3 seed Penn State (16-4) beat No. 6 seed Northwestern (6-13), 2-0, on Friday in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament to earn a semifinal matchup against No. 2 seed Michigan State (20-2) on Saturday. Michigan State then crushed the Nittany Lions' hopes of winning the Big Ten Tournament by handing them a 3-2 loss.

Senior back Kelly Concini said she was pleased with the team's performance in both games, despite the outcome of the second game.

"We played our type of game," Concini said. "This is exactly where we want to be sitting right now."

Against the Spartans, the Lions, who dominated on offense, gave up two of three goals on penalty corners, with the third coming off a failed penalty corner. Penn State outshot Michigan State 16-7 and took 13 penalty corners to the Spartans' six.

"We just totally outplayed them from the start of the game," Concini said. "We knew that we could take the game. We outplayed them."

With Michigan State having capitalized on two of their four first-half penalty corners, Penn State midfielder Heather Conroy ripped a shot past Spartan goalie Christina Kirkaldy off a penalty corner. Conroy's team-leading 18th goal of the season cut the Michigan State lead to 2-1 with less than two minutes to play in the first half.

After Michigan State regained their two goal lead early in the second half, Concini took a pass from Conroy to cut the lead back down to one. Penn State just ran out of time.

"I thought things were going to work our way," Conroy said.

"I thought we would get that lucky break and it just never played out."

In Friday's game, Northwestern held Penn State's seventh-ranked offense scoreless in the first half.

Conroy opened up the scoring when Michele Rigby and Jill Martz set her up on a penalty corner with 22 minutes remaining in the second half.

Karin Grap, continuing her offensive success coming off the bench, notched her 10th goal of the season to put the Lions up 2-0 late in the second half.

"Northwestern doesn't have much of an attacking game," Conroy said. "Their defense is unbelievable, play a total defensive game, double and triple teaming you inside the circle."

With the NCAA tournament set to start Saturday, the Lions will await their seeding and hope for homefield advantage for the first two rounds.