For the Penn State women's golf team, the spring season has been plagued with a series of disappointing finishes.

With five mediocre competitions under their belt, the Nittany Lions are looking to make an improvement, for potentially, the last competition of the year.

Penn State will compete in the Big Ten championship at 8 a.m. today at Michigan State University's Forest Akers golf course.

The event will begin with 36 holes today and finish with 18 holes tomorrow and Sunday.

Though the course can be challenging, the team has experience playing on it from its season opener in the fall.

Junior Christin Pacacha said it is possible to score on this course, but there is not a lot of room for error. The fairway is narrow, and the team's tee shots have to be almost perfect.

"I played pretty well last time we were there," she said. "If you put yourself in a good position, you can definitely score well."

The Big Ten is one of the strongest women's golf conferences in the country, with five teams ranked in the top 50 by Golfweek. Nationally ranked schools include defending champion, No. 8 Purdue, which is looking to bring home its third overall title, No. 22 Michigan State, No. 32 Ohio State, No. 34 Northwestern and No. 41 Michigan.

Despite having lost to these teams in the fall and spring, the Lions are keeping their morale high and working to maintain a positive disposition.

"We should have good expectations," Pacacha said. "We played the Lady Northern there, so we have a couple of rounds under our belts already."

Pacacha also said that the team needs to go into the championship weekend with good, positive thoughts in order to score well.

"We're excited about playing strictly Big Ten teams," she said. "It's a big thrill for all of us."

Because it's the last competition of the year, Pacacha said the Big Ten tournament makes everyone on the team heighten their levels of play.

The team feels comfortable, especially because it has more knowledge about the teams competing and knows what to expect.

"Having expectations hasn't been the greatest thing in the world for us," Pacacha said. "But we're going in with the attitude of being happy and playing the best golf we can -- and hopefully that will translate into good team golf. You can't control what other people do, you can only control you."