Penn State 38, Illinois 33

Consider the

» READ MORE: box score

from Penn State's

» READ MORE: 38-33 upset win

in Champaign.

(No, it is not a football box score, though it may resemble one in some ways.)

Take it slowly, as you would a glass of red wine or maybe a plate full of brussels sprouts and asparagus.

Be deliberate in considering all the numbers: the field goal percentages, the assists, the turnovers, the points per possession, the tempo.

Here we have a BCS-conference basketball game in which the leading scorer had 11 points and no other player registered more than seven. No player made more than three field goal attempts in the 40 minutes of play.

Penn State's Talor Battle made three of 11 shots, Jamelle Cornley was 2-for-8 and Stanley Pringle was 1-for-9. Illinois' Demetri McCamey was 2-for-11.

The pace was slow, only 57 possessions per side. Yet the winning team scored 0.66 points per possession, and recorded a floor percentage - the percentage of offensive possessions in which there is at least one point scored - of 33.9 percent.

That latter figure was lower than the losing team's floor percentage of 35.4 percent.

But it is good on a morning like to remember one of the great sporting aphorisms of recent years. Italian soccer star Christian Vieri once said that "goals are like children: they are all beautiful."

If Penn State hears its name on Selection Sunday, the final score of this game will be forgotten. All that will matter is that the Nittany Lions beat a ranked conference opponent on its home floor for

» READ MORE: the second time

this season.

And we can take comfort from having

» READ MORE: seen

» READ MORE: far

» READ MORE: worse

since this blog's inception.

Before we leave the land of bad basketball and return to normalcy, we have some more data to consider as March draws ever nearer.

You all know that Kyle Whelliston was at the

» READ MORE: NCAA Mock Bracket event

last week. While he was in Indianapolis, he requested and received the rights to post all 330 team sheets used to create the bracket on

» READ MORE: Basketball State

.

That would be enough of a coup. But in bringing this data to the public eye, Whelliston also highlighted perhaps the single most important function of these sheets. In stunningly simple fashion, they display the RPI of every opponent that a given team has played, separated into four parts: teams ranked 1-50, 51-100, 101-200 and 201+.

The sheets also list the average opponent RPI in all a team's wins and losses.

I have put together a table with the number of Top 50 wins and 201+ losses and the average RPI win and loss for the Schuylkill 16. I have also done a table for select other teams that I think are of interest to our region from the A-10, Big East, CAA and Ivy League.

You can see each team's entire sheet by clicking on their name in the table. You will have to have a Basketball State

» READ MORE: subscription

to see them all, but that seems to me to be the least you can do as a means of thanking Kyle for the service he has provided to college basketball fans.

I know the economy is in the tank right now but we also all know how much college basketball struggles for prominent coverage in print and online, so having resources like this available to us matters.

Teams are listed in order of

» READ MORE: this week's Schuylkill 16 rankings

.