The No. 15 Penn State women's lacrosse team's conference struggles continued on Friday night, as the Lions fell to No. 13 Johns Hopkins, 17-10, and failed to earn an American Lacrosse Conference (ALC) victory in their regular season finale.
Penn State (8-7, 0-4 ALC) ended the 2007 campaign with its fourth straight loss, and will enter the five-team ALC tournament, beginning Thursday, as the fifth seed.
"Losing to Hopkins was not the way we wanted to end conference play, but we feel lucky that we get a chance to play all the teams we lost to again in the tournament," senior attacker Karen Long said.
Johns Hopkins stormed out to an early lead against the Lions, building a 3-0 advantage in the first five minutes. Penn State would tie the game, though, getting back into it on two goals from attacker Karen Long and another from Kim Kontson.
A 4-1 run by the Blue Jays over the next nine minutes put Johns Hopkins back in control of the game, but once again, Penn State fought back. The Lions pieced together their own scoring run, getting two more goals from Long and one each from midfielders Kerry Shea and Erica Mihm to tie the game at 8.
The Blue Jays added two late first half goals to take a 10-8 lead into the break.
"It was huge for us to answer back after their runs, but we just did not take care of the little things and because of that we lost a lot of opportunities," Long said.
Despite climbing back into the game twice during the first half, Penn State couldn't handle Johns Hopkins' offense in the second. The Blue Jays ripped shot after shot, 20 in the half, and was able to convert seven times. At the other end of the field, the Lions registered only nine shots and scored just twice.
"We tried to come into the game focusing on team defense, we just could not stop Mary Key and the rest of their attack" Long said.
With the loss to the Blue Jays, Penn State finished the regular season without an ALC win. It lost tight games to Vanderbilt and Ohio State and suffered lopsided defeats against Northwestern and Johns Hopkins. The Lions will take on ALC No. 4 Ohio State when the tournament begins at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field, in Baltimore, on Thursday.
--Collegian staff writer Quinn Roberts contributed to this report
