At the beginning of November, three-quarters of the way into the season, our hard knowledge of Penn State as it heads into its season-making date with Ohio State Saturday amounts to the following set of observations against a very un-illuminating schedule:

• They can still play defense. The Lions lead the nation in scoring defense and rank in the top six in rushing, pass efficiency and total D, as well as sacks; they've given up a total of 26 points in the last four games, including a shutout against Minnesota. In PSU's only loss, the defense picked off Iowa's Ricky Stanzi twice and held the Hawkeye offense to 13 points, 10 of them coming on drives that began inside the Penn State 25 following turnovers in the fourth quarter.

• They prefer to spread the ball around. This is a pretty balanced offense -- 36 runs per game to 31 passes, and that includes plenty of garbage-time clock-killing -- and though tailback Evan Royster is carrying the bulk of the running game, four different receivers have hauled in at least 25 passes for 340-plus yards on the season. Derek Moye is the deep threat, but Chaz Powell, Graham Zug and Andrew Quarless (as well as Royster and Joe Suhey, who have 25 catches between them out of the backfield) have all been reliable targets.

• They're healthy. The defense has endured various injuries over the course of the season, notably to star linebackers Navorro Bowman and Sean Lee, but shouldn't be missing a single starter on either side of the ball Saturday.

For a top-15 team with serious BCS hopes and lingering (though very distant, thanks to unfriendly tiebreaker scenarios) designs on another Big Ten title, that's not very much, especially where the offense is concerned. That's what you get when your schedule to date includes one team that received votes in the latest polls, and you were held to 10 points by that team. As solid as the Lions have been offensively in every other game -- including their subsequent four Big Ten games, in which they're averaging 31 points on 453 yards -- their inability to score over the last three quarters against Iowa follows overhead like one of those tiny, personal storm clouds in the old Looney Tunes shorts as they come up against the only other defense on the schedule that measures up to the Hawkeyes'.

In the two most relevant precedents for taking on Ohio State Saturday -- the loss to Iowa earlier this year and PSU's win in Columbus last year -- Penn State's offense turned the ball over four times in the former case and was held to 281 total yards in the latter, its lowest output with Daryll Clark as starting quarterback. In both games, the Lions were held three straight quarters without a touchdown and finished with grand totals of 10 and 13 points, respectively.

So it's not going out on much of a limb to suggest Penn State won't be doing much scoring against the Buckeyes' typically stout, top-10 defense, at least nothing on the order of its 31-point average for the season; the Lions may be lucky to achieve half that. But Ohio State, of course, is in the same boat: Including last year's six-point, zero-touchdown effort against PSU, the Buckeyes' last four games against top-10 opponents since the start of the '08 season have netted 45 points and only three touchdowns, two of them with Todd Boeckman leading the offense in the fourth quarter of last year's Fiesta Bowl loss to Texas. OSU was held to 265 yards and had to settle for a pair of field goals after scoring an early touchdown in the 18-15 loss to USC in September, the first of four games this season in which Terrelle Pryor has looked distinctly underwhelming as a passer. The Nittany Lions have a way of intensifying that effect -- they lead the Big Ten in sacks and haven't allowed a touchdown pass with the game still in doubt this season -- and neither Pryor nor Ohio State's offense in general has shown much to earn the benefit of the doubt against a defense of Penn State's caliber.

If it's going to be that sort of mistake-magnifying defensive standoff, then, the central question should be, which gunslinger do you trust? As a fifth-year senior (and reigning All-Big Ten pick, with much better passing numbers this year) at home, the answer has to be Clark, if only because he still seems somewhat less likely to make the killer error in a tense game, as Pryor did last year on the fourth-quarter fumble that led to the only touchdown of the game -- the game-winner for Penn State. That's not the sort of history that's particularly likely to repeat itself, specifically. But if Pryor has The Leap in him this season, this is the time for it to finally come out; against Penn State's defense, not bloody likely.