31.6 — no it's not the class average on the latest Physics test.

It was Penn State's field goal percentage against Northwestern in their 55-49 loss on Saturday. Sadly enough, this was not the Lions' worst shooting performance of the season as they shot .290 against Pittsburgh in a loss and .309 against Wisconsin in a home victory.

The Wildcats bottled up the paint for most of the contest, evident by the Nittany Lions' scoring just eight points in the paint. This forced the Lions to hoist a school-record 34 three-point baskets. The Lions made just 11 of those attempts for a 32.4 percentage from beyond the arc.

"When we got the ball inside, they had two or three guys on us," Penn State coach Jerry Dunn said. "I thought when we kicked it out, we got good looks at the basket. "When you shoot 31.6 percent from the field, 32.4 percent on threes, and 40 percent from the line, you're not going to beat many people."

Because of the Lions settling for the outside shot they shot a season-low five foul shots and connected on just two.

The sound Wildcat team ran coach Bill Carmody's backdoor cut offense and although the backdoor game produced few baskets, their game did not suffer.

They took 22 fewer shots from the field than the Lions did and managed to make the same amount of field goals -- 18.

"It's a different type of way you got your principles on defense," sophomore Sharif Chambliss said. "We had to change our principles all the way around. We usually deny to the three-point line, this time we had to play one man below to make sure we didn't get backdoored."

Northwestern had assists on 15 of their 18 field goals and shot 51.4 percent from the field, including 46.7 percent from three-point land. It was the 11th time that a Penn State opponent has shot better than 50 percent from the field.

The poor shooting of the Lions led to horrid scoring droughts throughout the game. The Lions did not make a field goal from the 8:21 mark of the first half to the 17:59 mark of the second half, a stretch of 10:22 in which the Lions scored one point.

They also endured a stretch later in the second half of 7:13 without a field goal and once again could only account for one point. Together that's almost a half of basketball with only two points.

The Lions' first half shooting was a paltry 21.9 percent, but jumped to 44 percent in the second half. Take away Chambliss' 5-for-7 second half performance and the rest of the Lions shot just 6-for-18 in the second half.

"We didn't come out to play the first half with all the intensity we had talked about," Chambliss said. "That's what we were supposed to come out with and that's where we lost it, the first 20 minutes.

Teams without a major inside presence such as the Lions fall into the category of live by the three, die by the three and Saturday felt like cardiac arrest.