The Penn State Nittany Lions field hockey team is riding another three-game winning streak after their biggest weekend of the year to date, one which saw them secure their first Big Ten road victory since 2023 and their first comeback victory since 2024 within a span of 48 hours under first-year head coach Hannah Prince.
They shut out Rutgers by a score of 1-0, in a Friday afternoon game that could have major postseason ramifications when it comes to the Big Ten Tournament, and they earned their first ranked win of the 2026 season on Sunday afternoon in overtime against No. 19 Lafayette by a score of 3-2.
All in all, it was a great way to flip the script from past seasons, specifically from 2025, and a great way to prepare for an upcoming gauntlet in which they're set to play six Big Ten opponents in 22 days, as they aim to return to the conference tournament for the first time since 2023.
According to Field Hockey Corner, Penn State now ranks No. 14 in the RPI, and they have played the eighth-hardest schedule of any team in the country. Of the teams that have faced one of the 12 hardest schedules, only six have winning records, and Penn State is one of them, now sitting at 6-4 with seven games remaining on the regular season calendar.
But in this week's Penn Monto/NFHCA Division I National Coaches Poll, the Nittany Lions were once again omitted from the top 20, as the 2026 season continues to be the only season since the poll's 1998 inception in which the Nittany Lions have not been ranked.
Penn State unranked despite hot streak, weekend sweep
There's obviously no exact science to ranking college field hockey teams. It's the average of a collection of voters' ballots, rather than a committee's decision. Even then, it goes without saying that not all of the coaches would agree 100%.
And that's why the most important thing to note, ironically, is the fact that it technically means nothing. The poll's website explicitly states that it "has no bearing on selection to the NCAA Division I Field Hockey Championship".
But it seems more and more like the poll places a disproportionate emphasis on how the voters/coaches think teams are going to perform, rather than how they have actually performed. In that regard, it's very similar to the college football AP Poll on a week-to-week basis. How much does the "eye test" truly matter?
Earlier this year, for example, North Carolina accumulated several losses while remaining relatively high in the rankings. It took a losing record from them to drop out entirely, since the poll requires .500 records to retain eligibility. Now that they're back above .500, they're back in the top 10, suggesting that their preseason standing and perceived upside continue to carry significant weight.
Unless there's an NFL RedZone-like channel for NCAA field hockey that we don't know about, it's hard to imagine that every single voter can watch every single game every single week to decide where each team stacks up. We certainly don't do that, and that would be an unreasonable expectation for anybody.
Has Penn State earned the right to be ranked?
There are currently seven Big Ten teams eligible to be ranked (.500 or above), and two have been omitted this week. One is Penn State, and the other is the 6-6 Rutgers team that Penn State just beat.
Just one week after getting beaten handily by Monmouth by a score of 5-1, the Scarlet Knights, then a two-loss team, were still ranked ahead of a one-loss Monmouth team. Penn State played a tight game with Monmouth and lost by just one goal after a late rally, but that evidently wasn't enough to move the needle.
One of the five Big Ten teams that is ranked is Michigan, and they're 5-5 despite having played a weaker schedule (No. 10) and sporting a weaker RPI rank (No. 22) than Penn State. They're the only team ranked that is not above .500.
Penn State and Michigan are set to battle head-to-head later this season in Happy Valley anyway, so this should resolve itself one way or another.
But the Wolverines' win over what was, at the time, a struggling North Carolina team seems to remain a major part of their ranking, even though they've since dropped five games (including three out of four in the Big Ten). Both Penn State and Michigan are 1-4 against ranked opponents.
But would it actually resolve itself in a head-to-head game?
Head-to-head can't be the be-all and end-all in any sport when you're comparing a group of teams; we get that. That's why tiebreakers exist when it comes to standings, where rankings actually do carry more than the weight of opinion.
Let's not forget that, had Penn State beaten Rutgers in overtime to conclude the 2025 regular season, they would have finished 3-5 in Big Ten play and missed the conference tournament as the eighth-place team out of nine, placing them behind two of the three they had beaten head-to-head.
But head-to-head games should matter at least somewhat, especially when the teams' overall resumes are already relatively close; they do still function as a valuable comparison tool. And it's why the fact that Lafayette is still ranked over Penn State makes very little sense after Sunday's clash.
Even without totally leaning into recency bias from Sunday, Penn State has an unequivocally stronger case to be ranked than Lafayette.
Yes, Lafayette's only loss before the Penn State game came against No. 1 Northwestern. But the Wildcats were missing both Ashley Sessa and Olivia Bent-Cole in that game. Context has to matter, especially when "strength of loss" seems to be the best, and perhaps only, argument for keeping them in the top 20.
Penn State was 0-4 against ranked teams coming into that Lafayette game, but that included three losses against top-five opponents, two by just one goal (one in overtime) after second-half comebacks.
Unlike Penn State, Lafayette doesn't have a single victory over a ranked team. They have played just two teams in the top 20 in the RPI, and both resulted in losses. Among the teams they've beaten, nobody has a higher strength of schedule than 28th in the country.
Give them credit for beating the teams they were supposed to beat; that's what good teams do. But Penn State has done the same thing, with the added benefit of an upset (arguably two, if you count their impressive Rutgers shutout).
At the end of the day, again, the rankings don't really mean much. They serve little true purpose other than giving everyone something to talk about and sticking a number next to the team name on the broadcast scorebug.
But as of this week, it's difficult to justify Penn State's full body of work from their first 10 games of 2026 not earning them a spot in the top 20, especially considering where a number of teams with weaker resumes are currently slotted in.
Penn State is set to hit the road this weekend to take on Michigan State in a Big Ten clash on Friday afternoon, and then Kent State in a non-conference game on Sunday afternoon. Friday's game is set to be shown live on B1G+ at 3:00 p.m. ET, while Sunday's game is set to be shown live on Boxcast at 12:00 p.m. ET.
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