About to enter his 12th season of play in an unpredictable Big Ten, Joe Paterno is beyond speculation of what might happen at Wisconsin Saturday.

When asked what he thought the key factor for this weekend's game was, the Penn State coach quickly replied with a laugh, "Whoever scores the most points."

How does he think the rest of the Big Ten views Penn State?

"I haven't got the slightest idea."

Is his defense better suited to handle the Badgers' run game this season?

"We will find out."

And Zack Mills? What about him? Can he rebound from tough outings the last two weeks?

"Yep."

Paterno maximized his word efficiency at his press conference yesterday, answering most questions succinctly without making any predictions.

What he did not shy away from was extolling the current state of coaching in the Big Ten and the overall increase in talent since the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten conference in 1993.

Paterno mentioned Joe Tiller at Purdue, Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin, Glen Mason at Minnesota and Kirk Ferentz at Iowa as examples of the strong coaching presence currently in the conference. Only Alvarez was coaching at his school when Paterno and the Lions entered the Big Ten. Since then, every school has had turnover in the football head coaching ranks and Paterno believes that things are tougher now.

"I used to think there were a couple of people in the league when I first got

in here that we could outcoach," Paterno said. "But you can't outcoach anybody -- you have to outplay them."

Aside from gameday strategies, Paterno also said that recruiting has become tougher for Penn State because the Lions have opened up some states to the Big Ten that weren't traditional recruiting grounds a decade ago.

"You look at Wisconsin and the best defensive lineman [Anttaj Hawthorne] that they have is from Connecticut," he said. "Their running back, Anthony Davis, if he is healthy, is a New Jersey kid. The fact that there was a bigger manpower pool created for their recruiting as well as the quality of the coaching."

Fear factor

While Paterno said he didn't know if the Big Ten's perspective on Penn State has changed recently, junior safety Calvin Lowry had his own opinion at his press conference that followed Paterno's.

"People don't respect Penn State, don't fear Penn State like they used to," Lowry said. "When you step on the field, there's not that fear in people's hearts like there used to be."

Lowry said he has read reports and newspapers that indicate to him that Penn State doesn't get the respect from other teams that they had in the past. He said opponents don't care about the Lions' history and come into games expecting to win.

"Now people show up and they expect to beat Penn State," Lowry said. "And it's not that Penn State isn't good anymore, it's that people don't fear us. And that's what we need to get back."

Condolences

Twenty-seven years ago, tragedy befell Joe and Sue Paterno when their son David suffered a spinal injury in a trampoline accident at a friend's house. When Paterno's friend, current Florida State and former West Virginia coach Bobby Bowden, lost a grandson and a former son-in-law in a car accident two weeks ago, the Paternos offered their sympathy.

"Sue has written to Ann [Bowden] and tried to express our feelings of sympathy," Paterno said. "Whether anyone can ever do that adequately is debatable, but we certainly wanted them to know that we were thinking about them and we were sorry. I don't know what else you can do."

Bowden's relatives were killed when their car was hit a by a utility truck that was helping to restore power outages caused by Hurricane Frances on Sept. 6.