On Monday, 174-pound Penn State wrestler James Yonushonis walked into the wrestling office and sat down to idle away the final few minutes before practice.

Assistant coach Dave Hart walked in and Yonushonis said, out of habit more than anything else, "How're you doing?"

"I'd be doing a lot better if I were taking you to nationals," Hart replied.

"Yeah," Yonushonis said with a sigh, "so would I."

So would a lot of loyal Penn State fans.

Relative to their expectations, the Nittany Lions had a tough Big Ten tournament a week and a half ago. They came in with hopes of a team title and nine or 10 NCAA tournament qualifiers and left with something less than that, as in six qualifiers and a fifth-place finish.

One other thing was left in Columbus, Ohio, when the team bus rolled out of town: Penn State's hopes for its first national championship since 1953.

For the Lions to have reached the pinnacle of the sport and bring home the big prize from St. Louis this weekend, DeWitt Driscoll, Jarad Turner, Yonushonis and Joel Edwards had to be in the traveling party.

But they're not, and Penn State fans will have to live with it. The dreams of a national championship have to be put aside for another season at least. If a team hopes to win a national championship using only 60 percent of its available team, that 60 percent has to be pretty amazing.

Adam Smith, Josh Moore, Matt Storniolo, James Woodall, Eric Bradley and Pat Cummins are all pretty good, but overcoming Oklahoma State and Iowa and the rest of the elite will take some heavy lifting. It's a load the Penn State contingent just can't bear.

But take solace in this fact Lions fans: when the action begins on the floor of the Savvis Center tomorrow morning, a top-10 or top-seven or even top-five team finish is not out of the question.

History proves as much.

In 1995, Penn State took only four to the NCAA tournament and finished fifth. One of the four, Glenn Pritzlaff, didn't even win a match. To be fair the remaining three, Sanshiro Abe, John Hughes and Kerry McCoy all knew their way around a wrestling mat pretty well.

And then in '96, Penn State parlayed a seven-man team into fourth place. Not too shabby.

Whether the 2004 edition will reach such lofty planes is, at best, an unsure proposition. The two teams mentioned above were driven by some of the legends in Nittany Lions history, multiple-time All-Americans and national champions.

But the six that will wade into college wrestling's deep end this week can cause some damage, and then some. The two unseeded wrestlers, Smith and Woodall, both won more than 20 matches and have held their own with the best this season.

The remaining four are all high seeds, are good bets to place in the top eight and have the ability to pile up the bonus points through major decisions, technical falls and falls.

If Smith or Woodall can pull some upsets and grab a top eight finish, and the rest wrestle either up to or slightly above expectations, the top 10 is assured and the top five is in sight.

This time of the year, there is always the yearning to ask "what if"? Questions from the Big Ten championships arise. What if Yonushonis beaten Michigan's Nick Roy, like he did earlier in the season? What if Driscoll hit one more takedown in overtime against Michigan State's Andy Simmons? What if Edwards repeated his regular-season win against the Spartans' Jeff Clemens? This weekend's prognosis could have been very different.

And one would be remiss without casting a longing eye southward to Charlottesville, Va., where one Scott Moore is undefeated and primed to win a national championship, and join Cary Kolat and Jamarr Billman in Penn State's "what could have been" hall of fame.

But that's all water under the bridge. Asking "what if?" is a pointless exercise. All that matters is that Penn State's six horses are ready to run and they're ready to run hard.