The members of the Penn State men's indoor track and field team just spent two hours on a plane studying, sleeping and, not unlike other students, looking forward to this weekend, even if for a different reason.

The team left yesterday for the University of Iowa and the Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships, its first competition away from the Multi-Sport Facility this year. The meet will be held tomorrow and Sunday.

You'd have a hard time finding anyone outside State College, let alone the state of Pennsylvania, picking Penn State to win the overall team championship. The Nittany Lions have won every scored meet of the season, but each against mostly inferior competition.

The highly competitive Big Ten features three Trackwire top-25 teams, 50 athletes who have qualified provisionally for NCAA Championships and eight who have automatically qualified.

Wisconsin enters the weekend as three-time defending champs and the obvious favorite, with 15 NCAA qualifiers and a No. 4 national ranking.

The Badgers' best competition should come from Michigan, the nation's ninth-ranked team and runner-up to the Lions at the Sykes-Sabock Challenge Cup two weeks ago, despite some of the team's top athletes not participating.

Indiana is the only other Big Ten school in a top 25 dominated by southern schools.

The teams who most consider to be the dark horse this weekend are Illinois and Minnesota.

The Illini have the Big Ten's leading scorer in five events this year, including long sprinter Trammel Smith. Smith is an automatic NCAA qualifier and has the Big Ten's best times this season in both the 600 and 800-meters.

Penn State high jumper Ryan Fritz will have to watch his back for Golden Gophers jumpers. Minnesota has four of the conference's six best high jumpers, all of whom are within two inches of Fritz's conference leading mark.

The Lions have two Big Ten leading scorers, and they're both gearing up for their first Big Ten Championships. Fritz became the conference's top high jumper when he cleared 7-1.25 three weeks ago in a tri-meet, and fellow freshman Chris Morrisey has the best heptathlon score in the Big Ten this season (5,194).

Even if the team's young guns perform, Penn State will still need exemplary performances from almost all of their athletes to have a shot at the team championship.

A quartet of reliable sprinters, including veterans Alex Langan, Steve Morgan and Ernie Terrell and two-sport newcomer Knowledge Timmons, have been consistent scorers for the Lions all season and will have to be again this weekend.

The long powerful combo of Terrell and Morgan, both of whom have top-10 conference times in the 400, is looking to step up to match the level of competition.

In the shorter sprints, Langan and Timmons will try to live up to their top-10 times.

Experienced throwers Scott Vernon and Steve Meyers have to perform to the best of their abilities in the weight throw and shot put against a stacked field. The two have consistently been atop their events, but will probably have to establish new personal bests if they want to win this weekend.

The two areas Penn State lags in are the pole vault and distance events. No Lions are near the top of the Big Ten rankings in the pole vault. The team's distance runners will have to perform beyond previous personal bests if the Lions want to get any points from their events.