Tom Bradley looked even more tired than his players did on Saturday.

Reclining in his chair, the Penn State football team's defensive coordinator slowly sat forward and rested on his elbows after the Nittany Lions' 52-7 victory against Indiana on Saturday.

For the coach, in his 25th year on the Penn State coaching staff, it's been a long season. With all the criticism surrounding the program following the first six-game losing streak in Joe Paterno's 38 years as head football coach, it's been hard at times to rally the team together.

"How you handle praise and criticism will tell you how far you make it around here," Bradley said. "I tell them, here's the way it is, when you're winning everybody loves you and when you're losing, everybody's critical of what's going on.

"You just have to believe in us, we believe in you. And that's the one thing, as long as you believe in each other -- and that's why when you don't win you work so hard, there's that little gap in belief, like I don't know if I believe what I'm being told here."

The win on Saturday was good, Bradley said, but not necessarily everything the team needed.

Nine of the Lions' last 12 losses have been by 10 or fewer points. During that same stretch of time, only two of Penn State's 12 victories have been in games decided by single digits.

The problem, Bradley said, is that the younger players now aren't familiar with winning close games.

With freshmen and sophomores filling 24 of the 44 positions on the two-deep offensive and defensive depth charts, there is a sizeable portion of the team that lacks that experience.

"I can remember in the old days we felt like we were never going to lose, something good was going to happen," Bradley said. "This group has to understand that just to put on a Penn State uniform, that doesn't do anything. You've got to go out earn that, you've got to earn that reputation of being tough. That's one thing that we've really got to work getting across to them."

With just one game remaining in the 2003 season, Bradley said he feels like a better coach now than he was in August. So much of the work, he said, has been difficult and required the coaches to value everything.

Still, the criticisms of the team have been harsh. With calls for Paterno's dismissal, the repercussions reflect on the coaching staff, too.

Bradley said that, although the Lions' rush defense has been porous this season, allowing 11 100-yard rushers and ranking 109th in the NCAA, the Lions haven't allowed many points. Though Penn State has given up 21 points or more five times this season, the defense ranks 25th in the nation, fifth in the Big Ten Conference, in scoring defense at 19.45 points a game.

Whether good or bad, Bradley said, the team also has to learn to block out the opinions of outsiders.

"Publicity's like poison -- if you don't swallow it, it's not going to hurt you," Bradley said. "You can't let criticism bother you either because, when you're in a situation, if you can't handle that, you're going to be down in the dumps. If you don't believe in yourself, you're not going to go anywhere either."

Keeping the team together during a 3-8 season hasn't been easy work for any of the coaches, Bradley said.

On Saturday, it showed.