Allen Iverson and Jerry Dunn don't have the same philosophies on practice.

The Penn State men's basketball coach uses practice in order to evaluate his team and Iverson has shown up late or skipped it all together in past seasons. Iverson was the NBA's MVP in 2001 and is a perennial all-star, while Dunn's squad is struggling through a disastrous season that has it 0-9 in the conference. Apparently practice isn't that important, at least, in Iverson's case.

The Nittany Lions, with every additional loss get one step closer to the magical mark of 0-16 set by the 1999-2000 Northwestern team.

The Lions (5-15, 0-9 Big Ten) will look to put a halt to the streak against Iowa (12-8, 4-5) at 5 p.m. tomorrow at Carver Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa.

The age-old saying of "you play like you practice," has not been the case for Penn State. Dunn has said time and again that his team has had strong days of practice, but then on game night the team goes out and returns with the same result.

The reason why and how this happens has left everyone involved at a loss for words.

"I have no clue," forward Ndu Egekeze said.

"It baffles me how we can have extremely spirited, focused practice and then game time comes and I just don't know what happens."

Penn State biggest problem has been its inability to score the ball in the basket.

In practice Dunn said that he has seen his players knock down the open shots.

"In practice the right guys are taking shots," Dunn said. "In games, the same guys are taking shots, they're just not going in. That's the difference."

Dunn said that the players who have proved capable in practice of making shots are the players taking the majority of the shots in games and that there is a correlation between the two.

Jan Jagla, who has connected on only 12-of-59 field goals in the last eight games, is one of the players that have consistently misfired on jump shots. Dunn said he is one of the team's better mid-range jump shooters.

"For me to handcuff him would be poor as a coach," Dunn said.

"You can't kill a kid when he's not making shots, especially when you see him make those shots. It goes back to practice, and I don't expect anyone to agree with that ... You have to try and understand what a kid's strengths are."

Sharif Chambliss is another player that has been unable to convert open opportunities during the game.

Dunn said that he's got some good looks at the basket. However, he shot 4-for-12 from the field and failed to connect on a couple of open three-pointers in transition.

"If we're in transition and he's got an open look that may be as good of a shot as we get after running our offense," Dunn said.

"People don't have a chance to switch out on him, or have big men hedge out on him."

Only time will tell if the two days of practice have paid off, and it doesn't look good after losing by 20 points to this same Iowa squad only 10 days ago.