A trip to California at the end of February wasn't as pleasant as the Penn State softball team would have hoped.

The Nittany Lions dropped all five of their games in the Palm Springs Tournament this weekend.

After a 3-1 performance in its opening weekend and a few votes in the polls, Penn State was not able to put it together against some top-ranked opponents, concluding with a 12-0 loss to UN-Reno.

A lot of the struggles this weekend came on the mound with two key pitchers battling injuries.

"We had some problems on the mound," Penn State coach Robin Petrini said. "Ashley Esparza was coming off of an injury, so she was on limited innings. Jackie Hill broke her hand last night in our game.

"We were kind of down in the pitching staff this weekend. Our pitchers struggled a little bit this weekend, and once we get them back on track we'll be on our way."

Penn State (3-6) first fell to UNLV, 9-8 Friday afternoon. After the Rebels jumped to an 8-2 lead in the fifth inning, the Lions rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the same inning starting with back-to-back home runs from Danielle Kinley and Jenn Reynolds.

Despite the rally, the Rebels answered with the winning home run in the following inning.

To close out Friday's doubleheader, the Lions suffered a 5-0 loss against No. 6 Oregon State. The pitching staff held the Badgers to only eight hits, but the Penn State offense only managed three hits of its own.

Next, No. 15 Washington dealt the Lions a demoralizing 14-4 loss on Saturday night.

The Huskies scored all of their runs in only four innings, adding to Penn State's problems with giving up big innings.

"When you're pitching is down, sometimes you're going to give up some big innings," Petrini said. "We were limited with our pitching staff, so it hurt us."

Things didn't get better yesterday with a 1-0 loss to No. 22 Fresno State and then a blowout loss to UN-Reno.

The Wolfpack scored three unearned runs in the third inning and tacked on seven more in the seventh to put the Lions away in four and a half innings.

During the course of the tournament, the Lions surrendered six first inning runs, which has been a glitch in this young season. The Penn State offense did have some above-par performances from several bats this weekend.

Kinley, who was named Big Ten Player of the Week on Feb. 13, collected four RBI this weekend including a three-run dinger, her first home run of the season. The sophomore is currently leading the Lions' squad with an impressive .500 batting average.

Fellow sophomore Kayce Zielinski had a powerful bat, too, going 5-for-13 while driving home three runs, and also hit her first home run of the season.

"Our team will be fine," Petrini said. "We'll bounce back from this weekend and be ready to go next weekend.

"It doesn't matter if it's a one-run score, a five-run score, it's irrelevant by how many runs and we'll be fine going out next weekend."