Portland defeated Penn State 2-0 Friday evening in the NCAA Women's College Cup semifinals. The Pilots advance to their second appearance in the finals, and will play Santa Clara for the championship Sunday after the Broncos beat North Carolina 2-1 Friday night.

The Pilots' only previous final appearance was a 1-0 triple overtime loss to Notre Dame in 1995.

"Our second-half fitness hurt us. The idea we had was to make sure we pinched them at midfield," said Penn State head coach Paula Wilkins. "During the second half, we started chasing them and our fitness level showed, as we got into some trouble."

Sunday's matchup with Santa Clara marks just the third time two teams from the same conference will play for the national title, following North Carolina and North Carolina State (1988), and North Carolina and Duke (1992).

Christine Sinclair's goal in the third minute Friday gave Portland a 1-0 lead at halftime. Sinclair has 24 goals this season in 20 games, and with her eighth goal of the 2002 playoffs, she's just two goals behind Mia Hamm's all-time record of 15 playoff goals.

Wanda Rozwadowska capitalized on a scrum in front of the goal at 57:33, knocking in a rebound on the second of Emily Patterson's two shots, putting Portland up 2-0 in the second half.

"I do not think we played as well as we can, but we found a way to win and I am looking forward to the game on Sunday," said Portland head coach Clive Charles. "During the first half, we stopped defending. We tried to defend more on their side of the field [in the second half], and it seemed to work for us."

Sinclair, who now has 24 goals this season and eight in the playoffs, won a 50-50 battle for the ball just inside midfield, running onto a ball cleared out of the Portland box by Erin Misaki.

Minutes after Portland's first goal, Penn State's Christie Welsh beat Portland's central defense to a through-ball, and after Pilot keeper Lauren Arase misjudged the speed of the ball, Welsh's shot at the open net scooted wide to the right.

Portland's Betsy Barr hit the crossbar on a counter-attack minutes after Welsh's near miss.

"I felt that the first half was a chasing game. We were not as organized on the field as we would like to have been, but we turned things around," noted Barr. "We allowed too much room for Penn State [in the first half], and so to fix that problem, we had to get our players a lot tighter on the field."

The Pilots notched their school-record 17th shutout, and Lauren Arase had her fifth shutout of the playoffs. Portland is now 18-0 when scoring first this season, and 14-0 when Sinclair scores.

Portland dropped a 1-0 contest earlier this season to Santa Clara in a game the Pilots played without Christine Sinclair (Canadian national team duty).