Winning is contagious.

The Penn State men's basketball players and coach Ed DeChellis are hoping that the Nittany Lions have caught at least strain of the disease.

Penn State (4-2) is on its first three-game winning streak since Nov. 26 to Dec. 12 of last season. The 83-80 win against Rutgers Wednesday night marked the first time the Lions have won on the home floor of a Big East team.

For most of the game against the Scarlet Knights, Penn State had three freshmen on the floor.

They were Mike Walker, Geary Claxton, and Danny Morrissey. All three played 35-plus minutes and scored in double figures, with Claxton leading the way with 17.

The reason for the extended playtime for the youngsters was the ankle injury suffered by sophomore guard Marlon Smith.

Smith only played three minutes in the contest and is questionable for tonight's game against Lock Haven (0-3).

The guard has been struggling with his jumpshot all season, and mentioned at a press conference on Tuesday that he had recently figured out what the problem was.

"It has nothing to do with my legs, it has to do with where I'm releasing the ball," Smith said.

"I was shooting the ball from the palm of my hand. That's the only thing that's affecting my shot right now. So I stayed after practice and took a couple extra shots."

Going into this game, the loss of Smith is not as big of a deal as it would be in another matchup later in the season.

Lock Haven is a small Div. II school less than an hour away from State College, and only ended up on the schedule because of two broken verbal and one written commitments by unknown institutions that were scheduled to play Penn State. Also, Lock Haven coach John Wilson Jr. is friends with Penn State assistant coach Kurt Kanaskie, so getting the game scheduled was pretty simple.

It is Wilson's philosophy to schedule these types of games to help prepare his team for its conference schedule.

"I like to schedule as tough of a non-conference schedule as possible," Wilson said. "It gives us a lot of experience going into our conference schedule. Also a majority of my kids are from Pennsylvania and it allows those kids to play at the [Bryce Jordan Center]. This is something these kids will remember forever, it was something they have dreamt about their whole lives."

Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.