Tonight's NCAA tournament game between the Temple Owls and the Penn State Nittany Lions is scheduled to tip off at approximately 10 p.m. If that alone doesn't make the Penn State campus police nervous, I don't know what will.

Last Sunday after the Nittany Lions stunned the North Carolina Tar Heels down in New Orleans, celebration here on campus began immediately. My friends and I watched from our dorm window as hundreds of students fled out of East Halls and made a mad dash towards the center of campus.

We didn't even have to ask; we all knew where they were headed — straight to Beaver Canyon. To quote ESPN's college basketball guru Dick Vitale, "It was absolute pandemonium, baby!"

Ah, Beaver Canyon, home of Acme Pizza and high-rise apartment complexes filled with college students; it's the perfect setting for spontaneous pep rallies such as the one that took place last Sunday. Unlike two of the past three Arts Festivals where Beaver Canyon was the scene of some rioting, there were no injuries, citations or property damage on Sunday evening, according to State College Police Chief Tom King. "The students who came here were very cooperative," King said. "This was truly a celebration."

And a celebration it should be. Although it wasn't quite a David vs. Goliath scenario, it was definitely a monumental upset and a huge win for the program. After a late season loss to Big Ten basement-dweller Northwestern, and before Penn State's win over Michigan State in the second round of the Big Ten tournament, their chances of making the tournament were slim to none. In basketball terms they were on the bubble looking in.

On the other hand, North Carolina is a program steeped in basketball tradition. While this is only the second time since 1954 that the Nittany Lions have won two games in the NCAA tournament, Carolina fans consider anything less a failure. They were the co-champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference, arguably the best conference in college basketball and were en route to claiming a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament before getting walloped by Duke in the ACC tournament finals.

So what was the difference between the unfortunate incidences of past Arts Festivals and the gathering of students after the game on Sunday? Both took place in Beaver Canyon and both involved large numbers of college students.

"For the number of police who are here, the crowd is pretty well-behaved. I think it's the lack of alcohol," said Undergraduate Student Government President Matt Roan when asked his thoughts on the reason the celebration was such a positive one.

Roan's assessment of the situation seems pretty logical. The game began at 5 p.m. on a Sunday, the Sunday after St. Patrick's Day. That meant most people probably couldn't even bear the thought of alcohol, let alone drink it.

So if Penn State can keep its Cinderella story going and pull out a victory tonight against a very tough-favored Temple Owls team, can we expect a celebration along the same lines of the one on Sunday?

The 10 p.m. start means the game probably won't end until after midnight.

Although I don't know much about this sort of thing, I am told that people like to drink on the weekends to let loose after a long stressful week of classes, exams and papers.

That leaves the students a number of hours to get liquored up before the final outcome of the game is decided. Because of this, you can expect to see every police officer on the payroll on duty tonight, standing along Beaver Avenue, perhaps with riot gear in hand.

So let's hope for two things tonight. First and most importantly, let's hope Joe Crispin, Titus Ivory and Gyasi Cline-Heard lead our team to victory over our in-state rivals, propelling us to the Elite Eight. Secondly, let's hope the police won't be forced to break out the riot gear. I'll see you all tonight; you know where to find me.