As evidenced by his team's No. 9 preseason ranking and predicted second place finish in the Big Ten, not many people would have expected Iowa coach Steve Alford to say his team was out of the Big Ten title hunt by the conference season's midway point.

However, that was the case during Monday's Big Ten Teleconference, coming on the heels of the defending Big Ten Tournament Champions' fifth loss in the past seven games.

"(We have to) know that now we wipe things out and try to look at this as being 0-0," Alford said. "That's all we can do. We're not in the title hunt so we've got to do our job to try and get this thing to where we can finish in the upper half of the league."

The Hawkeyes (14-8, 3-5 Big Ten) will be hosting another team trying to stop the bleeding in the Penn State men's basketball team at Carver-Hawkeye Arena at 2:31 p.m. tomorrow.

The Nittany Lions (5-14, 1-7) have a slide of their own to stop. They have lost five straight since their last second victory over Wisconsin Jan. 9., and are coming off a 94-70 drubbing at Minnesota.

Penn State men's basketball coach Jerry Dunn knows there's no secret to his squad's shortcomings. The Lions have been out-rebounded by an average of 5.8 rebounds per game, and coming into last night's game were shooting just under 40 percent while their opponents were hitting more than 47 percent of their shots.

"Even when you make stops, you still have to put the ball in the basket," he said on the Penn State radio network after Wednesday night's loss. "I don't think it's any big secret. When we're not shooting well it's hard for us to win."

The Hawkeyes' troubles have come about for many reasons. Alford has not seen the same kind of concentration in his team during the Big Ten season as he did before the team's Christmas break.

His squad's assist to turnover ratio has been the statistic in which the lack of focus and rhythm was most evident. They have the league's worst ratio in conference play, 0.79, and have turned the ball over 22 times on three separate occasions.

"We took care of the ball prior to Christmas," Alford said. "And since then we have not taken care of it. Whether that's a lack of concentration, I'm not sure what that it is. We've got to find that rhythm, we've got to find it here in February, because you've got to take care of the ball in this league."

The Hawkeyes will get a chance to use what is perhaps their biggest strength to exploit the Lions' greatest weakness. In Reggie Evans, a 6-foot-8, 245-pound forward, Iowa has one of the nation's best rebounders. He currently leads the Big Ten with 11.2 rebounds per game. Overall, Iowa has the third best rebounding margin among Big Ten teams. The Lions have the league's worst.

Should the Lions focus all their energy on defending Evans, they can easily be burned by guard Luke Recker, who currently ranks second in the conference with 17.8 points per game, and second to Lions guard Sharif Chambliss in three-point field goals made per game.

The Hawkeyes will hope to get a boost from playing on their home court, where they are 11-1 this season.

"Obviously we have to take it one game at a time," Alford said. "We have played well at home this year, so we have to hope that that continues. We have great fans here. They have supported us all year. I think they will continue to support us, and they have helped us when we have struggled. We're going to have to get that again."