After playing three road games in nine days, the No. 13 Penn State women's lacrosse team (5-1) will have its long-awaited return home tonight at 6:30 when it takes on Temple (2-3) at Holuba Hall.

Temple is one of the few unranked teams left on the Nittany Lions' schedule, but they will not allow that fact to influence their level of play as they try to remain undefeated at home this season.

"Our goal is to play our game and not relax," sophomore midfielder Kerry Shea said.

"We need to take care of what we need to do, and we know we need to beat them."

The Lions have been very successful against unranked opponents this season, accumulating four wins in as many contests while outscoring opponents, 57-24, in those games. They hope to continue the trend against Temple, which will be the last game before conference play begins.

"We have a lot of tough teams coming up on our schedule," Penn State coach Suzanne Isidor said. "But right now we're just focused on Temple."

Since Penn State's upset of No. 8 Princeton on Saturday, Isidor has challenged the team to stay focused, reminding the players that the Lion's suffered a bad defeat at the hands of Temple just two seasons ago.

In 2005, the Lions lost to Temple at home, 6-5, three days after beating then-No. 1 Princeton on the road in a thrilling triple-overtime game.

The sting of that loss still remains with Isidor, who doesn't want to see the current batch of players fall into the same trap.

"We want to make sure something like that doesn't happen again," she said.

Shea wasn't on the team for that loss, but she and the rest of the younger players have certainly heard about it from their coach. Isidor feels that the best way for Penn State to earn a victory against Temple is to continue the progress it has made since the first game.

The Lions' defense has shown marked improvement over the past few games, and they have been able to limit turnovers.

As long as the mistakes are kept at a minimum, Isidor and the players are confident in the team's ability to win.

"We're playing really well together right now," Shea said. "And we're definitely getting better every game and building off of it.