They came wearing their blue and white face-paint and Penn State apparel, ready for an up-ending of the mighty Indiana Hoosiers last night. But they would go home disappointed.

Not even the 7,482 screaming Penn State fanatics could prevent Indiana from marching into a hostile Rec Hall last night and pulling out a 71-69 thriller over Penn State.

"We probably could have done a little more at the end," said Joe Getway (freshman-English) of the Lions slow-down offense in the final two minutes of the game. "They kind of held the ball."

The Lions might have played conservatively with the ball, but the standing-room-only crowd at Rec Hall did not hold back. From cheers and chants to boos and screams, the sixth man -- as the crowd is commonly referred to -- created an awesome atmosphere that was deafening at times.

One ballistic fan sitting in the west end of the arena behind the backboard even carried a special poster in for the Hoosiers.

"We figured most of the basketball players are guys," said Craig Palmer (freshman-pre-medicine), "so we got a poster with a good-looking girl with hardly any clothes on and see what happens."

What happened wasn't what the packed house wanted, but it had fun while it was there. From "Lets go Lions" to "We are Penn State," the crowd was thoroughly intense from start to finish -- and even a little before.

With still over seven minutes remaining until the game tipped-off, the upstart fans started chanting and hollering "Lets go Lions!"

"You can start any cheer," Palmer said, "and in a few minutes, the crowd will be going nuts."

And the crowd was going nuts throughout the contest. The fans remained standing during most of the evening, taking a load off their feet only during timeouts.

They focused their positive energy toward the Lion players, trying to help them regain their second wind and pull out a victory. Meanwhile, they weren't very hospitable towards their hated foes.

When senior center Todd Lindeman fouled out of the game with 9-minutes, 44-seconds left in the second half, the crowd was not reluctant to bid him farewell. Most of the 7,000 plus pleasantly waved goodbye.

"You can feel their emotions," said Lisa Buchheit (junior-elementary education), a front-row regular, of the players on the court. "It's like an emotional roller-coaster."

That's what most everbody in attendance experienced, as well as the coaches and players. Even Indiana Coach Bob Knight was impressed with the Rec Hall atmosphere.

"It's a great playing addition to the Big Ten," Knight said. "(The fans) are up, they're loud, they're supportive. I don't know what they're like for anybody else, but they're always up for us."

But even when the crowd was at its loudest, it seemed as if something always prevented the fans from really exploding -- namely a call or foul against the Lions.

"The refs are doing crappy," John Barnes (senior-accounting and international business) observed at halftime.

But according to one spectator on hand, the fans were the ones who were just a little too much to stomach.

"The fans are really rude -- they definitely hate Bobby Knight," said Indiana-born Hoosier-fan Bob Heidlage. But he did admit, "We're a little biased."