With players on the court in several matches that can be longer than an hour, momentum plays a big part in women's tennis.

Penn State (6-10) failed to establish any energy in the beginning of yesterday's match at Indiana, which made it difficult to win.

The Nittany Lions' 6-1 loss against the Hoosiers yesterday added to their downward spiral.

The team has lost five straight and dropped its Big Ten record to 0-4 this season.

Penn State came into the match better rested than its opponent and hoped to wear down the No. 34 Hoosiers.

Indiana toiled through a tough match on Saturday afternoon against No. 58 Ohio State and beat the Buckeyes, 4-3.

"We wanted to play within ourselves and tire them out, but we started slow and just had trouble gathering momentum," Penn State women's tennis coach Buffy Baker said yesterday afternoon following the loss to the Hoosiers.

After losing in doubles and struggling early in singles, some Lions showed signs of life in their second sets. Indiana's Karie Schlukebir barely beat freshman Sasha Abraham in the second set, while Penn State junior Megan Marton extended her match to a third set, but lost.

Junior Maaria Husain provided the Lions with their lone point of the day, winning the No. 3 singles match, 4-6, 7-6, (10-5). The third set was conducted in a tie-breaker format.

Baker felt the win would be some positive reinforcement for Husain, who has struggled lately in singles play.

"I think Maaria did the things we need to do and some of the players who lost saw that," Baker said.

"We're realizing we need to dictate the play of a match, rather than be reactive."

However, the late surge was too little to make an impact in the match.

Baker said the lessons learned against the Hoosiers will help the Lions in the long run, including the conference tournament.

This week the team will be practicing a lot of different scenarios in preparation for matches next weekend against Big Ten rivals Illinois and Purdue. "We're going to carry on and learn from this," Baker said.