The Penn State Nittany Lions field hockey team continued their hot streak on Sunday to cap off their third consecutive weekend sweep, knocking off No. 18 Michigan just two days after a comeback victory in a shootout against Ohio State clinched them a spot in the Big Ten Tournament for the first time since 2023.
The victory moves the Nittany Lions to 10-4 overall and 4-1 in the Big Ten, and it moves them into a third-place tie with Indiana in the conference standings. They trail Maryland and Northwestern, the two teams ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the country, by one game.
And speaking of that Penn Monto/NFHCA Division I National Coaches Poll, it's going to be really, really hard to justify leaving the Nittany Lions with an "unranked" designation yet again this week, after what they've been able to accomplish since the month of October began.
Penn State's hot streak is not a fluke
Penn State's seven-game win streak, their first such streak since they won the Big Ten regular season title and went to the NCAA semifinals during their final season under head coach Char Morett-Curtiss in 2022, is even more impressive than it looks.
First and foremost, they won seven games throughout the entire 17-game 2025 season. They matched that in a span of 21 days from late September to mid-October to bring them to 10 total, which is their most since that title-winning 2022 season.
Then there are the two comeback victories, one against ranked Lafayette, and another against a familiar conference foe in Ohio State that they hadn't beaten since 2023. Penn State finished the 2025 season without a single comeback victory, going 0-10 in games they trailed at any point.
They had lost 16 consecutive games in which they trailed, prior to the Lafayette win. Now they've won two such games in a row.
Then there's the success on the road, after a season that saw them go 1-8 away from State College, with the lone win coming against a team that was 0-14.
Penn State's road record is 4-1, and that includes a 2-0 mark against Big Ten opponents. That 2-0 record includes a win over a Rutgers team that's only lost one other Big Ten game. Across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, the Nittany Lions went a combined 0-8 in road Big Ten games.
And most importantly, there's their 4-1 Big Ten record, which includes four Big Ten wins in a row. Before that four-game conference win streak, Penn State had been 4-14 in their 18 most recent conference games.
Penn State Big Ten record (November 2023 to September 2026) | Penn State Big Ten record (October 2 to 18, 2026) |
|---|---|
4-14 | 4-0 |
Do the math: the Nittany Lions recorded as many Big Ten wins in a stretch of 17 days as they did over the previous 1,070.
W#GameOn | #PSUFH pic.twitter.com/nNhH8Vx90Q
— Penn State Field Hockey (@PennStateFH) October 18, 2026
What more do you want? What more does it take to be considered one of the top 20 teams in the country?
Improvement evident across the board
Their improvement from 2025 to 2026 has been evident in every aspect of the game. Penn State has already scored more goals in five games of Big Ten competition this year than they did in eight conference games throughout all of 2025, and they've already scored as many total goals this year as they did in all of 2025.
The offense is extremely well-balanced, with Maryland transfer Ella Gaitan tied for fifth in the Big Ten with 11 goals and Olivia Marthins, despite having started only five games, tied for eighth with eight. Sienna Dunn leads the conference with 13 assists in her first season in Happy Valley, and with team captain Natalie Freeman second on the team with five assists to go along with her three goals, she's also in the top 25 in the conference in total points scored.
And the defensive improvement should come as no surprise under first-year head coach Hannah Prince, whose Saint Joseph's teams historically excelled on that side of the ball during her four years in Philadelphia.
Penn State gave up an average of 2.35 goals per game a year ago, and that number has dropped to 1.36 this year. Goalkeeper Aby Deverka's save percentage is up from 63.6% to 75%.
You'd almost never guess that this is largely the same unit that allowed nine goals in a stretch of under 46 minutes between their final two games of the 2025 season. They are second in the Big Ten in shutouts this year with six, including four during the seven-game win streak.
It's long past time to rank Penn State
Put it all together, and it's fairly evident that the turnaround under Prince and the rest of the new coaching staff is for real. They've proven they can sustain the success, and absolutely no part of the hot streak is merely a flash in the pan.
It's not like the strength of their resume is based on some random fluke victory against a ranked team, or a single red-hot quarter that happened to make the difference in a game they ended up winning against a team that's clearly better than they are.
This team is every bit as good as their overall and conference records indicate.
For as much criticism as Pat Kraft has gotten for the Matt Campbell hire on the football side, the decision to make a much-needed change in a sport that generates far less of the public's attention by bringing a proven winner in Prince to Happy Valley has completely changed the trajectory of a program for which expectations were not particularly high across the board.
They are a legitimate contender in the Big Ten, and they deserve far more recognition nationally as a team than they've gotten.
How high should Penn State be ranked?
Since losing to Penn State, Lafayette has ironically moved up from No. 19 to No. 17, despite Penn State remaining unranked. Lafayette has lost to just two teams: Penn State and two-time reigning national champion Northwestern.
Additionally, Michigan was the only team not above .500 to be ranked, and that was the case in each of the past two weeks.
Michigan does have a strong resume; we'll give them that. But Penn State did a much better job converting on their opportunities on Sunday, and they solidified it with the win in a game they led wire-to-wire.
With Michigan obviously no longer eligible to be ranked at 6-8, since teams are only considered when they're .500 or above following the season's first two weeks, the path should be wide open for Penn State.
But it is sort of baffling that it took the Wolverines dropping to 1-6 in conference play, very much at risk of missing the postseason entirely, while Penn State is sitting 10-4 overall and 4-1 in arguably the toughest conference in the nation, to even have this discussion.
We get it; head-to-head can't be the be-all and end-all when you're comparing literally every team against every other team in the country, but based on the NFHCA's own rankings, Penn State's resume is a lot better than you'd think based on their continued exclusion from the poll.
Penn State did drop two one-goal games to Virginia and Monmouth, who slotted in behind No. 17 Lafayette and No. 18 Michigan this past weekend at No. 19 and No. 20, respectively. But their only other losses came in games against now-No. 1 and undefeated Maryland, as well as No. 4 Princeton, the only team to beat Northwestern. Both Penn State and Northwestern lost to Princeton by a single goal.
So hopefully that discussion results in Penn State finally getting the level of respect they have clearly earned, even though they've certainly been thriving under the radar over the past few weeks.
And we don't mean placing them No. 20 just for the sake of including them, either, because even that would undersell the progress they've made. If the poll is indeed a "weekly snapshot", as advertised, Penn State should probably be closer to the top 10 than being unranked.
Big Ten foe Indiana was ranked No. 11 this week before losing to Northwestern, and Penn State has a better overall record, a better RPI rank, and a better strength of schedule rank than the Hoosiers heading into their head-to-head matchup this coming weekend.
The new poll is set to release on Tuesday morning. Penn State earning a spot in the rankings would preserve the Nittany Lions' perfect record of being ranked at least once every year in the poll era (1998 to present).
Penn State is scheduled to hit the road to take on No. 11 Indiana (9-4, 4-1 Big Ten) this Friday, October 23 at 3:00 p.m. ET and No. 6 Iowa (11-2, 3-2) this Sunday, October 25 at 12:00 p.m. ET. Live coverage of both games is set to be provided by B1G+.
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