Everyone says how important the doubles point is in college tennis, but the Penn State women's tennis team often times seems to feed off losing it.

For the second time this season against Ohio State, this time in the first round of the Big Ten tournament, the Lions dropped two of the three doubles matches only to bounce back and thrash the Buckeyes in singles play, winning, 4-1.

The win is the No. 8-seeded Lions' first in the tournament since 2003 and sets the team up to take on No. 1 Northwestern at 10 a.m. today.

Through most of the doubles matches, the Lions (8-11, 2-8 Big Ten) seemed to be in complete in control and primed for a sweep. The No. 1 team of Maaria Husain and Jenny Shular had little trouble getting through their match, coming away with an 8-5 victory. The Lions' other two teams led throughout the majority of their matches, but the Buckeyes never relented and eventually wore the Lions down, winning, 9-7.

"Three-fourths of the way through the matches, we were the aggressors," Penn State coach Buffy Baker said. "The momentum was ours, but they never backed down and put us on the defensive."

Just like in the teams' first meeting, though, the Lions stepped up its play to roll in singles. No. 2 Sasha Abraham got the Lions on the board with an easy win, 6-2, 6-0. Both No. 4 Andreea Niculescu and Jenny Shular repeated their regular season performances against the Buckeyes with comfortable straight set wins. The clincher came when Husain rebounded from a poor first set to roll in the final two sets over Ohio State's Emily DeCamilla, winning, 3-6, 6-0, 6-2. Similar to their first meeting, DeCamilla got off her game early in the second and Husain pounced on the opportunity to run away with the match.

"[Maaria] stepped it up in the second set and then she just continued to roll," Baker said.

With the win, the Lions now have the opportunity to take its momentum from yesterday's match and possibly pull off a huge upset over the heavily favored Wildcats. As the No. 1 seed and the No. 5 team in the country, all the pressure is on Northwestern to defend its Big Ten title and live up to its lofty status. The Lions know this and feel that the lack of pressure on themselves will work in their favor.

"Northwestern knows that everyone's gunning for them," Baker said. "We need to come out loose with nothing to lose. We know the level they'll bring. We just need to go out and play our game."