The first run is usually the hardest to score, and, thus far, in the Penn State softball team's season, it has been the keystone to victory or defeat.

The Penn State softball team (2-3) will travel to Fayetteville, Ark., for the Lady'Back invitational where the Nittany Lions will try to restart their offense against Arkansas, Missouri-Kansas City, Drake University, Missouri State and North Dakota State University this weekend.

Last weekend, Penn State had masterful pitching that was aided by tight defense to help the Lions get out to a 2-3 start. Outside of a 5-0 defeat against unranked Longwood, though, the Lions were only able to muster two runs in the other four games and put up a miserable .154 batting average through the weekend contest.

Petrini said last weekend she wasn't worried about her offense, but the increased time in the batting cages during the week speaks louder than her words last weekend.

"We spent a lot of time hitting, trying to get people on track. We went with almost exclusively live pitching," Petrini said, explaining the pitching the girls faced in practice was against softball coaches.

She said the command and velocity of the training from coaches is not as extreme as what they would see in a live game, but is certainly a better tool than anything a pitching machine could provide.

"We put a machine up, but it was just one station," Petrini said. "It's just to work out some kinks at this point, it's not a great tool for hitting success."

The Lions are hoping the added workload on offense and a second look at live pitching will get the bats rattling.

"We're still going to try to find out where we are, see if some people can get a batting average this weekend and move forward from there," Petrini said.

Penn State's first test is against the host Arkansas at 3 p.m. this afternoon. Arkansas started its season slowly with a 1-7, with its only victory coming against No. 24 Iowa.

The most difficult opponent of the weekend will be Missouri State. The Bears started off this season's campaign with a 3-2 record and also handed No. 7 Alabama its only loss of the season. Offense has not been a problem for the Bears who have averaged 3.2 runs per game.

The Lions will have 24 hours after their first game this evening to figure out their offense before facing off against the Missouri State machine at 3 p.m. tomorrow.

Petrini said although the rankings don't show it, the caliber of play this weekend should be much like that seen in Gainesville, Fla., last weekend.

"The teams that we're playing have had some good wins, so the caliber is still a good caliber of softball. You can't ever look past anyone. You have to treat them the same, that's what we'll do," Petrini said.