For the Penn State men's indoor track team, winning a Big Ten championship would accomplish a season-long goal; every meet up to this point has been a way to prepare for this meet.

Tomorrow and Sunday at Purdue, the Nittany Lions will come face to face with that goal, as they compete against some of the strongest track teams in America. Because the Big Ten is one of the strongest track conferences in the country -- eight teams are in the country's top 20 -- all the teams competing have a legitimate shot at winning the championship. The final standings just depend on which teams are up to the challenge when it counts the most.

And though the strongest teams in the Big Ten have been Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, Penn State coach Harry Groves pointed out that any team is capable of winning the championship.

"How it's going to come out, or who's a favorite or something like that, you don't even begin to guess," Groves said. "Who's going to come out the winner just depends on who handles it better on that particular day."

The focus of the meet will be primarily on team performance and on earning enough points to win the meet, with no plans of qualifying for the NCAA Championships. Groves does not expect his athletes to reach NCAA qualifying marks because the events are set up in rounds, with the top qualifiers in heats moving through multiple rounds to advance to the finals of each event.

"In a conference championship, you hardly ever get qualifying marks because you're running rounds," Groves said.

The exhausting nature of several rounds of competition means most competitors will be too tired to try to perform at the level necessary to get qualifying marks, and put the onus on the athletes to beat the other participants at the meet.

With several teams in the Big Ten not submitting marks for the national power rankings, there are currently several unknowns in terms of what to expect.

"We're coming in here without an honest evaluation of Minnesota, Ohio State and Michigan State," Groves said.

So as Penn State heads to the Big Ten Championships to face the strongest teams on its schedule, it has as much of a chance of winning as any other team at the meet. It will all come down to handling the pressure and the motivation of the meet.

"Some people motivate and get good; some people get motivated that they get scared and can't do a thing," Groves said.