Junior point guard Ben Luber shot a pass to senior forward Travis Parker for an easy bucket late in the first half. Parker had streaked down the floor, finding himself ahead of a couple defenders.

With no ball, he was all alone. But Luber's pass made the point clear in the Nittany Lions' 69-61 victory Saturday in West Lafayette vs. Purdue (9-15, 3-10 Big Ten): the team wouldn't ride solely on one player's shoulders.

Four Nittany Lions scored in double figures for Penn State (13-11, 5-8 Big Ten), led by Parker and his team-high 21, a feat they've accomplished three other times this season in conference play.

But leading scorer Geary Claxton always figured into those efforts. Though he only scored eight points yesterday, as Penn State swept the season series from the Boilermakers, he led the team with 15 rebounds. Total team effort.

"We're just trying to get more and more close and playing together," Parker said on the Penn State Sports Network. "Come tournament time, NIT or whatever, you have to play as a team."

On the way to doing so, the Lions played sharp basketball. Instead of forcing a shot, Penn State consistently made the extra pass out of the post or kicked the ball out to the perimeter off a dribble drive.

With 9:22 left in the second half, freshman forward Jamelle Cornley backed a Purdue defender under the basket. Cornley (11 points, 13 rebounds) was on his way to his first career double-double.

But rather than turning to shoot a jumper, he passed it to Luber, who passed it to freshman forward Milos Bogetic. Result? A 2-point jumper and a 54-39 lead.

"We knew they were really going to collapse on Geary and Jamelle. Those kids did a great job of reversing the ball out of the post," DeChellis said. "We passed it, we defended it, guys understood what we were trying to do. It was really fun to watch."

Particularly during an 18-5 Lions run in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Purdue switched to zone defense, which DeChellis said you don't see much. But, he said, "they just had a hard time guarding us tonight." Nevertheless, the run turned a close 34-29 halftime game into a rock-solid 52-34 lead.

Moreover, Penn State's sprint out of the gates in the second half signaled a change from the last two times it held a halftime lead. A 36-34 midterm lead vs. Wisconsin on Feb. 11 turned into a 20-point loss. Holding a 27-25 lead vs. Minnesota three days earlier, the Lions fell apart down the stretch to lose, 77-66.

"Sometimes we get caught up in the moment, and we don't really pay attention to the situation," Cornley said, referring to the need to rebound and play to keep the lead.

But Saturday afternoon, the Lions came out of the locker room closers. Not just Claxton and Cornley, whose 28 combined rebounds almost out-rebounded Purdue (30). Or the Parker who's averaging 19 points a game since he scored 21 at Illinois.

It was junior guard David Jackson, who scored 12 and hit a "very, very important" shot, according to DeChellis, with 3:48 left. The Boilermakers managed to compress their deficit to eight points, and Jackson's 3-point shot stretched it back into double digits.

And it was Luber, whose nine points and six assists in the first half helped the Lions keep pace with Purdue's Matt Kiefer, who posted 13 points and eight rebounds in the period.

"Our kids are really starting to come around," DeChellis said. "We're starting to do different things to win games."

DeChellis said his assistant coach Kurt Kanaskie called the game perhaps the biggest "we've played all year." And as Penn State notched its third Big Ten road win of the year, equaling its most ever, it put the emphasis on "we."