Why is the number six scared of the number seven?

Not because seven ate nine, but because the number seven has now taken over for six as the number of consecutive Big Ten titles for the Penn State women's soccer team.

With wins over Iowa (0-12-2, 0-8-1 Big Ten) and Minnesota (5-10, 1-8) the No. 3 Nittany Lions (13-1-1, 9-0) clinched its seventh consecutive conference championship with one game remaining.

"I'm extremely happy," Penn State women's soccer coach Paula Wilkins said. "Every year it gets more and more difficult to repeat with all the good teams and players in the conference."

The Lions' offense erupted against the Big Ten's worst team in the 8-0 win over Iowa. Against Minnesota, Penn State pitched another shutout, winning 2-0.

The two shutouts this weekend now give the Lions six straight, which breaks the consecutive shutout record of five that was set in 2000 and also matched earlier this season. Erin McLeod got the shutout yesterday against the Golden Gophers and combined with Amanda Brown on Friday for the other. McLeod now has eight shutouts on the season. With her performance over the weekend she set a new school record with consecutive shutout minutes with 600:11. The previous mark was held by Emily Oleksiuk (518:45) in 2000.

"I think that it's important for the defense as a whole," McLeod said of the records. "It's kind of a nice result. Obviously setting records is good but we're just playing for the win."

On Friday it took a half for the Lions' offense to get going. Sophomore Holly Lincoln came off the bench to score the game's first goal 23:26 into it.

In the second half Penn State exploded for seven goals scored by five different players. Junior Tiffany Weimer scored two, sophomore Ali Kreiger scored her first two goals of the season and Amanda Lentz, Brooke Mertz and Carly Bedesm all added one.

"We were a little slow against Iowa and played to their level in the first half," Weimer said. "We scored seven in the second and put them away fast."

In Minnesota the Lions came out hungry to clinch their conference. Lentz scored her fifth goal of the season to put her team up 1-0 at half. Weimer then added her 18th of the season early in the second half on an assist from Lincoln.

Weimer has now scored in every Big Ten game and with yesterday's goal she broke Christie Welsh's streak of seven games with a tally. Weimer has scored in the last eight games.

The entire offense played well all weekend, firing 29 shots, 19 on goal, against Iowa, and 23, 11 on goal, versus Minnesota.

"We put a lot of pressure on the ball and caused a lot of problems and did a good job setting the pace of the games," Wilkins said. "The results we got were the ones we were hoping for."

No. 16 Ohio State comes to Jeffrey Field on Friday night and serves as the only roadblock left in front of Penn State's sweep of the Big Ten.