The Northwestern field hockey team outplayed the No. 8 team in the country for much of their game this past Sunday at University Park, Pa. But the scoreboard wasn’t in agreement, as NU (5-7, 0-4 Big Ten) fell short in its upset bid against Penn State, 3-0.

“To play as well as we did, at a high level against a team like that, is great,” senior Suzi Sutton said. “But we need to get over the hump.”

The NU offense came out firing shots and controlled the ball in their offensive zone for the better part of the game. And the defense held a typically explosive Penn State offense to zero first-half penalty corners for the first time since their season opener. NU’s swarming defense also allowed just four first half shots.

But the name of the game is capitalizing on opportunities. And while Penn State made the most of their looks on the NU goal, the Cats simply could not finish.

“Our team is playing strong and outplaying our opponents in a lot of ways,” NU coach Marisa Didio said.”

Penn State opened the scoring with 10 minutes left in the first half when Neilye Stoner ripped a shot from the top of the circle that beat a diving Sherri-Anne Nyberg.

The NU defense continued to hang tough, but Penn State made it a two-goal game 16:18 into the second half and tacked on one more with less than 10 minutes to play.

But sometimes you can’t get a true sense of a game by just looking at the final score.

“This was a 3-0 game, but nobody was leaving the stands,” Didio said. “It was such a close, well-fought game, but we’re obviously not satisfied with the outcome.”

The deciding factor was the Cats lack of execution on its penalty corner opportunities. NU ended up with six penalty corners, while Penn State, the Big Ten leader in corners with 133, had only four.

“We need to start rising to the call on our attack corners,” Didio said. “It’s a matter of fine-tuning that piece of the puzzle.”

The Cats have played extremely tough against the nation’s best this year, but have had trouble closing out their attack opportunities.

“It’s going to happen,” Sutton said. “Everyone is really close on the team, and we believe it. We just need to take that next step.”

NU, will look to get back on the right track and get its first Big Ten win this Saturday when they hit the road to Indiana.