At his weekly press conference yesterday, Ed DeChellis compared Penn State's last two opponents, Wisconsin and Ohio State, to heavyweight boxers.

Then he used a name of a fighter probably unfamiliar to most college students -- Jerry Quarry -- to describe the Nittany Lions (10-15, 1-11 Big Ten).

The Badgers, who took over the nation's top rank in the Associated Press poll yesterday, deliver body blows and are the type of opponent, "You think you have a chance [against] but you really don't," DeChellis said.

The Buckeyes, who are No. 1 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll, are a knockout team that can beat anyone, DeChellis said, but also leave themselves susceptible to an upset like Penn State nearly pulled off last week.

So while Ohio State and Wisconsin (both 12-1 in the conference) might resemble former champions Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, DeChellis likened his squad to Quarry, an Irish boxer from the 1960s-70s who is renowned as the best heavyweight never to win a title.

"We play well at times, and we play some good basketball at spurts, which is very important, but we haven't put 40 minutes together in a long time," DeChellis said.

The result is an 11-game losing streak and Penn State's last place position in the conference standings, a place where no one within the program expected to be at this point in the season.

"Not at all," junior guard Mike Walker said.

With four games remaining in the disappointing regular season that began in early November, motivation is certainly hard to find, Walker said. The new goal is preparing as best the team can for early March's Big Ten tournament while it focuses on the next game on the schedule.

"It's pretty painful," sophomore forward Milos Bogetic said of the losing streak. "Especially because we worked so hard in preseason; we started off well in the Big Ten with our first game against Northwestern [a 83-57 win], and it just came one loss after another."

After one of those losses, a five point defeat at Minnesota, DeChellis handed out a DVD and a piece of paper to each player that saw playing time. On the DVD was the game film, and on the paper was a self-critique questionnaire.

DeChellis asked players to answer questions like, "What did you do offensively, defensively, did you get as many rebounds as you could, did you get give the effort that you could have given?" sophomore forward Jamelle Cornley said.

Cornley added that the coaching staff has asked players to do more self-evaluation lately, but that DeChellis hasn't wavered from what Cornley called his "hard-nosed" and "austere" personality.

"He's one of those coaches where he's been down before. He understands that when you're down, the only thing you can do is find a way to get back up, and look at those people who you're with every day, and try to figure out how to get out of this thing that we've dug ourselves in," Cornley said. "He had expectations for the team and the program, but he's still doing what he can. He hasn't given up on us."