Nothing good can come from this week's Penn State game at Indiana.

If the Nittany Lions lose, it's the largest upset of the Big Ten season. If they win, no matter how convincing, they've proved nothing.

Nevertheless, at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon in Indiana's Memorial Stadium, No. 16 Penn State (7-3, 4-3 Big Ten) still has to play a dismal Hoosier team (3-7, 1-5 Big Ten) that is just trying to get through its season.

Much like last week's win against Virginia and next week's match-up with Michigan State, the Indiana clash is another chance for the Lions to pad their bowl resume against an inferior opponent.

The Hoosiers are trying to rebuild under first-year head coach Gerry DiNardo, and while he won't discount his team's chances, DiNardo readily admits its shortcomings.

"People have moved the ball on us both on the ground and in the air, so it's their choice which way they want to do it," he said.

Indiana's porous defense has given up 33.3 points per game. Aside from being largely inexperienced up front, the Hoosiers have a nasty tendency of putting the unit on the field in poor field position.

"We're punting the ball and putting our defense at midfield against good offenses," DiNardo said. "We're just not good enough to put our defenses in that situation three or four straight times."

To make matters worse for Indiana, the team will be trotting out a new starting quarterback, Tommy Jones, to face a Lions defense that has the second most sacks in the Big Ten. Further hindering the situation are the injuries that have knocked out key Indiana starters such as center Brandon Hatcher and middle linebacker Herana-Daze Jones.

Despite how hapless the Hoosiers may appear this season, Penn State isn't taking them lightly, knowing that a fourth loss will in all likelihood knock the Lions out of a New Year's Day bowl game.

"These guys have bought into that, and they are working hard to do that," Penn State football coach Joe Paterno said. "Right now we are a pretty good football team."

For weeks now, Paterno has been talking about the importance of focusing on these last few games. However, if the Lions are the cohesive team full of heart that Paterno has been advertising, closing out the year shouldn't be a major problem.

However, if not, Indiana would be as good a place as any for everything to go wrong.