Although most people like a week off, Coach Joe Paterno and his squad would have preferred to play last Saturday.

Coming off a big win against Syracuse, the Lions, with emotions running high, fell back to Earth last week after a week off. Paterno, speaking at his weekly media conference yesterday, said he does not know if the week off will help.

Alabama beat Tennessee, 47-30, on Saturday after Tennessee had a week off.

"I think we would have been better off to play Saturday," Paterno said. "Tennessee had a week off before they played Alabama, and that didn't exactly light up Tennessee.

"I would have preferred that we played Syracuse last week, and go into this game with a full head of steam," he continued. "But that's the way it is, we have to play with a week off, and hopefully we'll play as well as we can."

Tri-captain Andre Collins says he is "concerned" about slowing down.

"No one likes to have a week off once you get in the groove and win five games in a row," Collins said. "But we just have to practice hard this week, and go out there with the crowd and the noise and the intensity, and then we should be all right."

Blair Thomas, however, disagreed.

"I think the week off is not going to hurt us, I think it's going to help us," Thomas said. "It gave us an extra week to look at Alabama. We had a chance to get some conditioning in last week, so I think it's going to help us out."

The Lions got a chance to rest their injuries, including Thomas' hip injury, Paterno said, and work on their game instead of looking at Alabama's game.

"We didn't want to do a lot of things until we saw the Alabama-Tennessee game," Paterno said. "Fortunately we did, particularly on defense, because Alabama did a lot of things against Tennessee they had not done prior to Tennessee. Last night was the first night we really zeroed in on Alabama."

The Lions' injury situation has improved. Frank Giannetti (broken hand), Hernon Henderson (injured leg) and Jim Deter will be ready to play on Saturday. Tight end Todd Young just started practicing on Monday after missing the game against Syracuse and is probable for Alabama.

If Thomas gains 38 yards on Saturday he will pass 1973 Heisman Trophy winner John Cappelletti for fifth place on the career rushing yardage list. Thomas has 2,602 yards to Cappelletti's 2,639 yards.

The Lions will play another dreaded TV game this week at 2:30 on CBS. Before they beat Syracuse on ESPN, the Lions had lost six straight games on national TV.

Brian Chizmar and Collins are approaching 200 tackles for their careers with 196 and 186, respectively. Chizmar leads the team in tackles this season with 65 and Collins is next with 59. Chizmar needs 28 tackles to pass Bruce Bannon and move into the Top 10 for career tackles.

Richard Schultz, executive director of the NCAA, will attend the game and meet with University administrators, athletic administrators and coaches. He will also address the media.