With both Penn State's and West Virginia's women's basketball teams sporting identical 12-6 records in the conference after Saturday's games, a tie-breaker was needed to determine home-court advantage. Both teams won at home to split the season series.

In this day and age of intricate logarithms used to compute playoff teams and tournament seedings, how would Atlantic 10 officials decide who plays where?

They pulled out a coin, flipped it in the air, and when it landed tails up Penn State was awarded the home-court advantage. That simple.

The teams were assigned heads and tails by reversing the school names in alphabetical order, so West Virginia got heads and Penn State tails.

The Lady Lions went into Rutgers Saturday knowing that a win would assure them the home-court advantage. Win, you play at home. No doubt about it.

Rutgers, however, needed a win to tie St. Joseph's for the A-10 title. With that incentive the Lady Knights knocked off the Lady Lions, 79-73, to throw a monkey wrench in Penn State's plans. Then Penn State hoped George Washington could beat the Lady Mountaineers to keep WVU from tying Penn State in the standings.

Needless to say, the Lady Lions didn't get a helping hand. West Virginia, which put itself in position to tie Penn State by upsetting Temple, 80-78, on Thursday, won another two-point decision on the road by beating the Lady Colonials, 66-64.

Ironically, Rutgers lost its coin toss with St. Joseph's for the top seed in the tournament. Rutgers beat Penn State, but didn't get the top spot. Penn State lost, but ended up with what it wanted anyway.

Got it? West Virginia fans are probably still shaking their heads, but thanks to Lady Luck the Lady Lions will play WVU at 7:30 on Wednesday in the friendly confines of Rec Hall.

But to beat West Virginia the Lady Lions can't afford to play the way they did against Rutgers Saturday. Telicher Austin worked over the Penn State defense as she did when the teams played Feb. 11, scoring 25 points and pulling down nine rebounds. Austin scored 35 points against Penn State in that first game.

"Austin is the best player in the conference," Coach Rene Portland said. "Austin obviously was the key for Rutgers. She is a complete player and she proved it today."

But the Lady Lions did themselves in, committing 20 turnovers and making only 10 of 22 free throws. Penn State has been ranked as high as seventh in the country in free throw percentage, but that skill didn't show on Saturday.

Rutgers took a 34-28 halftime lead and extended it to 42-28 in the first 2:22 of the second half. Rutgers kept the Lady Lions at arm's length the rest of the way, opening up a 70-54 lead with 3:37 left before Penn State closed the gap to six points at the end of the game.

"We are not where we want to be because we had too many turnovers and we had poor foul shooting," Portland said. "We are not doing the things we have to do to win games like this."

The Lady Lions fared better in their other games over the break. On Feb. 25 the team cruised past George Washington, 66-44. Lisa Lambert made her first start of the year and hit all six of her shots from the floor, finishing with a team-high 12 points.

The result was the same on the road against Duquesne as the Lady Lions took care of the Duchesses, 78-66, on Feb. 27. Duquesne made a game of it early, shooting close to 70 percent for the first 10 minutes. But the Duchesses came back to earth after that and Penn State's inside game wore down Duquense to assure the win.

Tanya Garner led Penn State with 18 points and 12 assists. She also scored on a sparkling end-to-end driving layup at the buzzer that was the highlight of the game and also gave Penn State a 35-26 lead at the half. Garner has made the buzzer-beating layup a trademark, as she took some of the wind out of Temple's sails on Feb. 23 with an almost identical shot.