UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State women's soccer program defeated Wisconsin 3-0 at Jeffrey Field on Thursday night at Jeffrey Field.
With the 2-0 win at Maryland on Sunday, the Nittany Lions have back-to-back Big Ten shutouts with three matches remaining of the regular season.
PSU was strong on both sides of the ball, out-shooting UW 14 to 8 and limiting the Badgers to just two shots on goal, which were quickly wrapped up by keeper redshirt senior Katherine Asman.
Senior+ Penelope Hocking and senior Payton Linnehan each scored to put PSU up 2-0 at the half, and junior Elle Kershner added icing on the cake with a goal in the 87th minute right after she checked into the match.
Head coach Erica Dambach credited good counterattacking as one of the reasons the Nittany Lions' found success against the Badgers.
"I thought the game got pretty wide open at times," said Dambach. "It felt like a track meet, and we're always going to have success in a track meet. But at times, we were able to settle down a little bit and start to get control. They had us on our heels for a while though, even after we scored the first goal. We had to kind of dig in a little bit but had some good performances."
With the win, PSU moves to 9-3-2 overall and 4-2-1 in the Big Ten, while UW drops to 10-3-2 overall and 5-2-0 in the league.
HOW IT HAPPENED
Penn State scored on its first shot of the match when senior Kate Wiesner got a through ball to Hocking who sent it home for the 1-0 lead in the sixth minute.
With the momentum, the Nittany Lions would take the next three shots finding the back of the net again in the 30th minute this time with Hocking delivering the assist to Linnehan.
The Badgers had a few good chances late in the first half. In the 38th minute, UW took two shots off a corner, one of which was blocked by junior Kaitlyn MacBean and the other sent high off-target.
With under two minutes until halftime, PSU fouled UW just a foot outside the box. The Badgers could not take advantage though as their free kick sailed high.
Coming out of the break, Wiesner said, "We talked about getting a shutout. That's something that we place a lot of value on with this team. So, it's a whole team commitment to defending, and I think that we came out in the second half with the mentality that we were just going to lock things down."
Penn State did just that, limiting the Badgers to just three shots, while Asman saved two of those.
In the 87th minute, Kershner checked into the game and took advantage of a Badger defender's slip on the backline, taking the ball and shooting above the keeper to seal the game.
NEXT UP
The Nittany Lions play their regular season home finale at 1 p.m. on Sunday vs. Michigan.
The Penn State women's soccer season is presented by the Smeal College of Business.
