Nov. 17, 2007
Penn State Field Hockey NCAA Championship Game Notes Supplement
- If Penn State wins on Sunday, the Nittany Lions will finish the year with an overall record 17-7, which will give it the most losses and the fewest wins of any NCAA champion. Currently, the previous NCAA champion with the fewest wins and most losses in the season of its championship was Michigan, which went 18-5 en route to the championship in 2001.
- 2001 was also the last year that the NCAA champion was from the Big Ten and also was the last year that the NCAA champion was from a conference other than the ACC.
- Penn State will be looking become just the third-ever NCAA national champion from the Big Ten. Previous NCAA champions from the Big Ten include Iowa (1986) and Michigan (2001)
- Penn State is going for its first NCAA championship. The Nittany Lions own two national titles as part of the AIAW National Tournament, the predecessor to the NCAA Tournament.
- Sunday's game will be Penn State's ninth straight NCAA Tournament game in College Park, Md.
- If Penn State is able to win on Sunday, then it will have defeated four teams from the same conference (ACC) in its four NCAA Tournament games. No other team has ever won a national championship by winning all of its NCAA Tournament games against teams from the same conference. Penn State would be the first.
- Penn State has won 21 all-time NCAA Tournament games, the seventh-most in the country.
- Sunday's game will be Penn State's 49th all-time NCAA Tournament game, the fourth-most of the country.
- Penn State and North Carolina are tied for the second-most NCAA Tournament appearances in the country. Each school is making its 24th appearance in the NCAA Tournament, which trails only Old Dominion's 27.
- Sunday's game will be a matchup of two of the top five winningest field hockey coaches in NCAA Division I history. Penn State's Char Morett is fifth all-time with 379 career wins entering Sunday's game while North Carolina's Karen Shelton is third with 447 wins.
- If Penn State wins on Sunday, it will have knocked off the top three ranked teams in the final STX/NFHCA Top 20 poll. Maryland was No. 3, Wake Forest is No. 2 and UNC is No. 1. The Nittany Lions will have also knocked off three of the four seeds in this year's NCAA Tournament.
- Mallory Weisen's goal on Friday vs. Wake Forest was her 11th of the year and her eighth game-winning goal.
- In the postseason (Big Ten and NCAA Tournament games), Britney Long has five goals while Shaun Banta has two goals and three assists. Weisen has three goals.
- Penn State has a 0.98 goals against average and three shutouts in the postseason despite being outshot on average by a shot per game.