After losing 15 of its last 17 games, saying that the Penn State men basketball team is frustrated would be the understatement of the season.

"You don't have the type of season we're having in terms of wins and losses and not have frustration," Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. "It would be abnormal if we weren't. We're just not playing well as a group and individually, if you look at stats we're not have banner years shooting the ball and so forth ... to get out of that frustration you have to win and to win you have to do the little things for 40 minutes."

The Nittany Lions (7-17, 1-10 Big Ten) will have a chance to break two streaks -- a 29-game losing streak on the road in the Big Ten and an overall six-game losing streak -- tomorrow as they travel to Evanston, Ill., to face the Northwestern Wildcats (12-12, 4-7).

Penn State's lone victory in the Big Ten was a 65-62 nail-biter on Jan. 22 at the Bryce Jordan Center against Northwestern.

The Lions had one of their best shooting performance of the season, hitting 46 percent of their shots from the field.

On that day, Penn State was led by freshmen Danny Morrissey and Mike Walker's sensational 3-point shooting. Walker and Morrissey combined to hit 9 of the 14 3-pointers made by the Lions and shot an amazing 60 percent from behind the arc. Junior forward Aaron Johnson recorded 21 rebounds in the three-point victory. But after that game everything has gone down hill for the Lions leading scorer. Johnson has shot just 17-for-57 (29 percent) during the Lions six-game losing streak.

The first meeting against Northwestern was also the last time Penn State shot better than its season average of 40 percent from the field (last in the Big Ten), excluding garbage time in the Illinois game. The poor shooting is still surprising to some of the players this late in the season.

"We just haven't been hitting [shots]," Walker said. "Personally I've been taking the same shots I've been taking all season, and sometimes you just don't hit."

Besides shooting, defense has also been a glaring weakness of the 2005 Lions.

They rank last in scoring defense (70 points per game), steals (5.43) and turnover margin (negative 2.87).

With the combination of poor shooting and lackluster defense, the Lions have a very small margin of error in every game they've play in this year.

"We need it to be a low 60s game to have a chance," DeChellis said. "I'm just concerned with everyone's numbers, we're just not making any baskets."

Making life more difficult for Penn State, Northwestern comes in to this match up with a 10-3 home record at Welsh-Ryan Arena, which DeChellis compared to Rec Hall.

"It's a 10- to 15-point advantage for them," he said.

The Lions will look to avoid their 30th straight loss on the road against Big Ten teams at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow.