A week off in the Big Ten season couldn't have come at a better time for the Penn State football team.

The Nittany Lions are 0-3 in conference games, tying the 2001 team for the worst start since joining the Big Ten in 1993. Only in 2000 has a Joe Paterno team had a record equally as poor as this season's 2-5 mark after seven games.

With 10 days remaining until the Lions travel to Iowa to play the No. 9 Hawkeyes, Paterno has spent the first part of his off week thinking.

"We have done a lot of soul searching," the 76-year-old coach said. "We got to work on fundamentals. We haven't kicked or caught the ball well and haven't done as well as we hoped."

With the additional time off, quarterback Zack Mills and running back Austin Scott have the opportunity to get back to 100 percent.

Mills, who injured his knee on the final play of the first quarter against Minnesota, will take the same number of repetitions as Michael Robinson this week in practice, Paterno said.

After last weekend's game he said Mills was healthy enough to play against Wisconsin had Robinson and Chris Ganter been injured. But the closest Mills came to the playing field in West Lafayette was during pre-game warm-ups throwing passes.

Paterno wasn't ready to reveal if Mills would regain the starting spot when he is healthy enough to quarterback.

"I don't know," Paterno said. "I'll worry about it next week. I'll see how he does over the next couple of days."

Paterno has been many decisions that he has to make over the next week and a half, including whom his starting quarterback is. The week off gives the coach additional time to make the important judgments.

Various teams have different perspectives on how to approach the bye weeks. Many teams take a few days off and the coaches travel around on the recruiting trial. This was the case this week for Northwestern's Randy Walker.

The Wildcats have relaxed the past couple of days and will return to the practice field tomorrow.

Walker said it's important to give his players some time off considering they have been working since the first week in August.

Like Penn State, Northwestern is a very young team.

"We need not to reinvent the wheel," Walker said, "but go back to the basic steps. Every week we get caught up in game planning and this week we don't have to worry about that. We're working on fundamentals."

Penn State is spending its week off in similar fashion. The Lions needs to improve in the passing game, kicking game and stopping the run.

So far, it hasn't mattered whether Mills or Robinson starts under center due to the Lions' wide receivers dropping passes.

Over the past two weeks the Lions have missed three kicks, allowed two punt returns and fumbled two kicks.

Penn State's defense hasn't shown the ability to stop the run at all this season. Seven opposing players have gone over the century mark and the only team that didn't have a 100-yard rusher was Kent State.

Even with the problems Penn State has to work out, Purdue football coach Joe Tiller said that once Penn State has some success, "watch out."

"I came off the field and felt fortunate to win," Tiller said. "They need to have some success and this league better hang on."

The way things are going, it may be 2004 before this team experiences that success.