With Tavaras Hardy's lay-up at the 13:04 mark in the second half of Saturday night's men's basketball game, Northwestern jumped on top of Penn State 51-37.

It was not looking good for the Nittany Lions.

Open shots were not going down, with some hitting nothing but air. It appeared as if Penn State just didn't have it on this night.

"We didn't play with the sense of urgency from the tip as we should have on either end of the floor," Lions coach Jerry Dunn said.

However, 16 seconds later something happened that turned the game around. Penn State senior guard Joe Crispin hit a three-pointer from the top of the key.

From that point on, the Lions outscored Northwestern 36-15 to claim the 73-66 victory.

The Wildcats had no answer to Penn State's run. With one of its better players on the bench in sophomore Winston Blake, Northwestern just went cold.

Blake was 5-6 from the three-point line before he had to exit the game early in the second half due to picking up his fourth foul.

"He's got to play 40 minutes," Wildcats coach Bill Carmody said.

"He can dribble, he can pass, he can shoot. (Picking up his fourth foul) was very significant."

It took a while for Penn State to take advantage, as its struggles from the first half had carried over into the second.

But Carmody was not comfortable with the lead, he said. And he knew Crispin's shooting struggles might not last the whole night.

He was correct.

"I'm always worried when he shoots the ball," Carmody said.

"Good players make good basketball plays and it was the time for him to do it. And he did it."

Crispin scored 18 of his game-high 28 during the second-half run. The hot hand came after Dunn decided to sit Crispin for a few minutes to calm him down.

"As a coach, you have to make a decision when somebody is struggling a little bit and give him time to take a blow and refocus and get back in the game," Dunn said.

"Joe is not going to struggle the entire game. But I have to try to help him out from a coaching standpoint."

As the statistics indicate, Dunn made the right move.

"I was frustrated," Crispin said. "But when I got back in there, I was like, 'Enough of this. I'm going to start hitting my shots.' "

The rest of the team decided to hit their shots too. Penn State made 56.5 percent of their attempts in the second half, far from the 39 percent they shot in the first.

While the offense caught fire late in the game, the one thing that might be overlooked was the defensive effort by the Lions. They forced 20 turnovers and many times created offense with their defense.

"Defensive is how we got back into the game," Dunn said.

"We had to make some shots, but more importantly, we made stops."