The athletes are there and the potential is seemingly endless, but no one wins championships on potential alone. In Saturday's Blue-White scrimmage, the Penn State football team's defensive backfield looked solid, but there was definite room for improvement.

Trying to replace some very large cleats vacated by Shawn Mayer and Bryan Scott, the Nittany Lions' stable of defensive backs did a good job Saturday of preventing the long ball and staying with receivers on deep passes, but had trouble defending the hook patterns at 10 to 15 yards. While a wet field made playing conditions less than ideal for either side of the ball, the defense limited the offense to just 334 yards passing and intercepted five passes.

However, quarterbacks Zack Mills and Michael Robinson combined to complete 17 of 29 passes for 246 yards, mostly against the first and second-team defenses.

While the two quarterbacks did throw an interception apiece, they each threw a touchdown pass to wideout Kinta Palmer.

Robinson's six-pointer came on a fade pattern in the corner of the end zone seconds before halftime as the 6-foot-4 Palmer out-jumped the 5-foot-11 Maurice Humphrey, even though the latter had position. After the game, Humphrey said he owed a lot to Scott and Mayer.

"We definitely have big shoes to fill," said Humphrey, a redshirt freshman. "Bryan Scott and Shawn Mayer, those guys showed me a lot because last year I played scout offense and didn't play defense."

The other first-half touchdown pass came on a 57-yard bomb from Mills to Palmer, who split the safeties in a zone coverage scheme with a skinny post route. Senior cornerback Rich Gardner, who figures to be one of the starters next year, said that a player shouldn't let one bad play bother him.

"As a corner, you're always going to give up a play or two," Gardner said, emphasizing the importance of bouncing back the next play. "I've tried to work on that this spring, getting back and trying to keep that intensity level at 110 percent."

Safety Calvin Lowry, who played in four games last season as a true freshman before breaking his leg in the first half of last September's game against Iowa, said the intensity level in practice has been extremely high this spring because of the on-going competition.

"Whoever has the best day in preseason and shows what they can do, they're going to be the starter," Lowry said. "You've got to go out every day with the mentality that you are the starter."

Coming out of spring practice, Lowry, Humphrey, Gardner, sophomore cornerbacks Alan Zemaitis and Gio Vendemia and fifth-year senior Hero Yaacov Yisrael will figure prominently in the secondary rotation. Yisrael, who is rebounding from a torn anterior cruciate ligament he suffered last August, said he is feeling much healthier and that he sat out Saturday's game as more of a precaution.

"[My knee has] come a long way," Yisrael said. "It's close to 80 percent right now and I'm on track with everything. I just want to protect my knee right now and I don't want to risk anything."

While Yisrael sat out to protect his knee, the offense and defense protected their playbooks by running only about 20 or 25 plays, making it hard to get a feel for how either side would perform in a game situation.

The talent was evident in the secondary. How it manifests itself next season remains to be seen.