No league can make the Penn State men's basketball team sweat more than the America East Conference.

Not until sophomore forward Milos Bogetic ripped the ball out of Hartford guard Michael Turners' hands and slammed it to the ground as time expired, could the Nittany Lions' (6-2) collective heart beat again, as they defeated the Hawks (3-4), 56-55. Neither team had scored since there was 2:36 left in the game.

On the previous Penn State possession, Bogetic had a wide-open put back chance after a missed shot and offensive rebound by point guard Ben Luber. With no resistance in his way, he hesitated, triple-clutched and missed the shot.

Chests were thumping as Hartford freshman guard Joe Zeglinski missed a final three-point shot as the ball found its way into Bogetic's hands in the waning moments.

After losing to Stony Brook earlier this season, also of the America East, a one-point win over a mid-major school was better than other things. Junior forward Geary Claxton, who scored 16 points and pulled down 10 rebounds, eight of those boards on the offensive end, made that much clear.

"I'd rather have a bad win than a good loss," junior forward Geary Claxton said. "I'll take a win no matter by one or who it's against. It's a win, and a win is a win."

Claxton was the only Penn State player to reach double figures, as the Lions shot 37 percent from the field, including making 7-of-23 shots from behind the arc. That rivaled a Hartford team that shot 8-of-28 from three, but averaged 27 trey attempts per game prior to this contest.

Penn State coach Ed DeChellis shrugged in bewilderment toward his players, wondering why they had failed to guard out on the perimeter on an uncontested three-point miss by Hartford's Michael Turner going into the half.

After the game, DeChellis said that his team has made no improvement since the Georgia Tech game last Tuesday. All of the coaches will consider this performance a loss in many ways.

"As a staff we feel, we treat it as a loss," he said. "I'm not very happy with where we are at. I just don't think we are playing very well, and I've got to get them to play better and figure out how to get rid of these lulls."

The Lions held an 11-point lead with 9:21 remaining in the second half, only to see it evaporate with four turnovers in almost a five-minute span to find the score tied at 52 all with 4:23 remaining.

The small band of Penn State students who donned Hawk attire to support Zeglinski -- from Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia -- had something to cheer about at halftime, and into the second half, as Hartford held a one-point lead with 2:48 remaining in the game.

For Hawks' head coach Dan Leibovitz, this just proved a little something about his tiny conference to the big-boys in the Big Ten.