The Penn State men's basketball team is struggling.

Nittany Lions senior guard Joe Crispin led Penn State with only 13 points against Illinois, where the Lions shot a dismal 17-for-63 in the game.

The team was beaten badly by Illinois and Indiana in its last two contests and the Lions still haven't fully recovered from a last-minute loss to Iowa on Jan. 6.

Penn State's two wins following the Hawkeyes heartbreaker have been Ohio State and Northwestern, which were both narrow wins against teams with less talent than the Lions.

Although every night in the Big Ten is a tough contest, especially for Penn State who has traditionally been a lower level team in the conference, the Lions have no excuses this year as they possess one of the league's best backcourts and a decent frontcourt to complement their guards.

Some of the Lions' losses might be because some of the players the team depends on didn't execute, but more because the opponent played extremely good defense on Penn State's key players.

"Sometimes, you have to give credit to the teams you play," Penn State men's basketball coach Jerry Dunn said. "Collectively we're struggling in terms of shooting the ball right now."

The Lions shot horribly at Illinois and are known to be a streaky shooting team, but Penn State has only been victorious in one game when the opponent has scored over 75 points this season, and that was a 100-91 shootout with Wagner on Dec. 18.

The point? For Penn State to win, it needs to play better defense.

The Lions cannot depend on Joe Crispin, 6-foot-4 guard Titus Ivory or 6-foot-8 senior Gyasi Cline-Heard to be the horse that the team rides to victory.

The team needs everyone to step up defensively and get stops and the offense will take care of itself.

"You can't harp on the shooting woes," Dunn said. "We have to turn up our defense and the shooting will come around."