Everyone likes to talk about home-court, home-field, or home-course advantage in sports. There are all sorts of advantages teams can use when playing at home, from knowing their field or court to having the support of the friendly crowd behind them.

While knowing the court and being familiar with how the ball bounces would seem like obvious advantages for a tennis player, one might not suspect that a home crowd would affect the sport.

However, for the No. 63 Penn State men's tennis team (12-3, 1-2 Big Ten), the crowd is a big factor when playing at home. On Friday, bad weather forced the Nittany Lions to take the courts in the Penn State Indoor Tennis Center, rather than the fan-friendly outdoor facilities of the Sarni Tennis Center. Nevertheless, a good crowd of about 45 people filled the bleachers in the upper tier of the indoor facility to support their Lions as they battled Big Ten foe Purdue, defeating the Boilermakers, 5-2.

The crowd of families, friends, former players and tennis fans showed its support for the Lions all day long, despite the 1 p.m. start time and a nearly five-hour long match.

After almost every point, win or lose for the home team, shouts of, "Here we go [insert any Penn State player's name or pseudonym (including "Hammer," as a reference to Bradley "The Hebrew Hammer" Hunter) here]," echoed through the tennis center.

The crowd roared with approval as No. 1 singles player Mark Barry sent Purdue's Paul Rose sprawling, dropping his racket, on three occasions late in the second set of their match. At one point, a pumped up Barry hit a shot down the line past Rose, causing the Penn State bench to rise to its feet and leaving some of the crowd bewildered by the shot, but still cheering on Barry.

Barry went on to win the match, 6-3, 6-4, and when he met Rose at the net to shake hands, the crowd gave an ovation that lasted more than a minute, showing gratitude for the match it had just witnessed.

"That's a home-court advantage -- we have really good fans," Penn State coach Jan Bortner said after the match. "We go to other schools and they have a lot of fans, but their fans really don't get into it -- but our fans, they get into it. They really energize our guys, and they feed off of that."

Hunter, who seems to really use the energy from the crowd, punctuated nearly every other point in his match at No. 4 singles against David Robinson, with some sort of acknowledgment of the fans or his teammates. Whether it was pumping his fists toward, or pointing at the onlookers, he tried to get everyone into his three-set, back-and-forth match.

"Brad plays with a lot of heart -- a lot of guts -- and the other guys feed off of that," Bortner said. "He was our sparkplug today, we needed a guy like that today and he was our man."

In his match, the clinching point for the Lions, Hunter got out to a quick one-set lead, winning the first set, 6-1. Robinson then won the second easily, 6-3, and seemed to be on his way to a great come-from-behind victory, at one point leading 3-5 and having more than one opportunity to serve for the match. However, with the support of those in attendance, Hunter battled back to force a tiebreak and then grabbed the victory. The crowd's attention and noise seemingly grew after each point in the match, especially as Hunter ran towards to stands pumping his fist and pointing to the Penn State bench immediately after scoring match point.

"[The size of the crowd was] surprising for a 1 p.m. match on Friday," Hunter said. "They really helped us out -- me especially.

"I was real sluggish in the third set at times, and just hearing them and all the support from my teammates, I just decided, 'Maybe I'll finish it off.' "

The victory for Hunter and the Lions, their first in the Big Ten this season, was tremendous, as they were able to utilize the energy from the fans. Now the team must go on the road, to unfriendly courts, for all but one of the remaining weekends this season.