Can a team with a .666 winning percentage be categorized by inconsistency and poor execution at times? Bluntly put, yes.
Can it keep itself from looking ahead on the conference schedule? We will see this weekend.
With an 8-4 overall record and a 2-1 mark in the American Lacrosse Conference, the No. 8-ranked Penn State women's lacrosse team has used those words to describe its play since spring break.
The Nittany Lions began play with four straight wins, but they've split their last eight games, going 4-4.
A team that can look so great one day can look stagnant the next, regardless of the caliber of team it's facing.
Luckily for the Lions, their great start masks their .500 play over the last month.
They've beaten some of the nation's elite during the more recent stretch, like then-No. 1 Princeton and then-No. 15 Penn. The Lions have also shown their ability to play less-than-spectacular lacrosse, as evident in losses to unranked William & Mary on the road and, more embarrassingly, Temple at home.
The Lions fell to No. 1 Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., last Friday, 14-6, failing to capitalize on any momentum gathered by the come-from-behind 16-9 win over Penn 10 days earlier.
And again, Penn State coach Suzanne Isidor attributed the loss to poor execution.
"We never stopped hustling or stopped working hard. We just didn't execute well," Isidor said.
That's the tendency. With the exception of the Temple game, Isidor has never used lack of effort as an excuse for poor Penn State play.
"We got a lot of opportunities to score and didn't take advantage of them, and Northwestern did," Isidor said.
The loss to the Wildcats marked the start of the second, more important half of the season as the remaining schedule consists mainly of conference opponents. Although the Lions had avoided the 'inconsistent" label by tallying two convincing wins heading into the break, the word will reappear if execution remains an issue.
After all, imprecise execution leads to just execution. If you're not on top of your game in the NCAA tournament, your season will be over surprisingly fast. Going 2-1 against No. 1 teams doesn't win you any bonus points when the slates are wiped clean in the tournament.
Since the Lions reached their apex at No. 2 in the polls following their win over Princeton, they've steadily slipped. Now they're on the bubble of the top 10, thanks largely to their great 4-0 start.
If they want to get anywhere this season, they cannot continue to ride these coattails, no matter how worthy they are, because when the calendar flips to may and the postseason begins, it won't matter who you beat the first week of March.
The Lions have shown the nation they can outplay anybody, anywhere. They've knocked off two juggernauts in Princeton and Virginia, and traditional powerhouse Maryland. Yet they've also shown they can lose to your little sister on any given day.
That said, this weekend I have no idea which Lions are going to show up. Will it be the team that started 4-0 or the team that trailed Northwestern 6-0 after just 20 minutes? The scary thing is, I don't think I'm the only one with this thought.
Isidor probably has similar doubts in her head.
This weekend, its games against No. 20 Ohio State Friday and Ohio Sunday may determine if the Lions can regain their consistency from earlier in the year. These two games are easy to overlook, which is what the Lions have done on occasion this year.
No. 11 Johns Hopkins on April 30 is the easy game to spot on the schedule.
"Now very game becomes a little more important," Isidor said. "Our next three games are really big."
Perhaps the biggest problem the Lions have is adjusting to winning. Last year they finished 6-11, falling by one-goal deficits on many occasions. Now that they came out on top early in the season, they've found that victory brings its own problems, notably overlooking teams that don't match up with them on paper.
This weekend such a trap is set. Let's see if they can keep their paws out of it and regain the form they had in the early going this year.
