THE COLOR PURPLE

Here's a suggestion for the next time Penn State's basketball team decides to do a team-building exercise...karaoke. That's right. Let coach Eddie D put on his best neon stretch pants and 80's hair band style wig and take the stage. The song...a somewhat improvised brand of David Lee Roth's version of California Girls that goes something like this: "I wish they all could be like Northwestern."

Penn State looks like an entirely different team against the Wildcats. Its offense actually looks fluid (the Lions two highest scoring outputs this season both came against Northwestern), its bench plays with confidence and contributes at both ends and its defense is active and makes Northwestern's offense look like...well, Penn State's usually does.

There's just something about the purple and white that brings out the best in Penn State. Typically, that something is just the fact that the Wildcats are awful. But this season, that's not the case as Northwestern was, as of two weeks ago, a serious contender for an at-large berth in the big dance. This year's bottom feeders, Indiana and Iowa (along with Penn State), both beat the Lions. Traditional basketball royalty Indiana drew a particularly uninspired effort from the blue and white in State College.

By contrast, Northwestern and its 18 overall wins has been a solid middle-of-the-pack team in the conference this year, but gave Penn State two of its three Big Ten wins by a combined 30 points. The only question that remains is whether or not Penn State can possibly draw the Wildcats again.

As the standings are right now, Penn State is tied for 10th with Indiana and, assuming both teams lose out, will draw the seventh seed as a first-round opponent in the conference tourney. And just who is that lucky number seven team? Northwestern.

There's still a week of regular season games left to be played, but even if the Lions can't improve their stock by pulling off an upset of in their next two games, they still might not be in bad shape to play into the weekend in Indianapolis. Considering the Lions next two opponents are both likely second-day matchups for Penn State in the Big Ten tournament, this week will be extremely valuable should the Lions draw one of those two teams in the postseason.