Nittany Nation is hurting right now.

Penn State lost 24-23 to Iowa Saturday. It fell to 9-1, and from No. 3 in the BCS standings to No. 8, and out of the national championship race.

Why Penn State lost this one

Joe Paterno feels it as much as anybody.

"Saturday night was a tough night for me, no sense kidding you about that," he said during his weekly media teleconference Tuesday.

"Football games are tough on me these days because you go out there and you get in the cart and you go across the field and the whole bit.

"Then you take the flight home and all that stuff, and then you get home and you play the game 10 times in your head. You don't get any sleep Saturday night."

Since three more games lay ahead, Paterno can't afford sheer anger. Fans can. They revel in it.

Reactionary stuff. Blinded by emotion.

Fire the coach. Bench the quarterback. Or blame them, at least.

JoePa didn't exactly douse the flames Tuesday.

The quarterback, Daryll Clark, has been superb all year but was undeniably bad Saturday, completing only eight of 23 passes for 86 yards, and throwing a bad and crucial interception that ended his team's last possession.

Paterno admitted that taking Clark out in lieu of backup Pat Devlin crossed his mind.

"Yeah, obviously you always think a little bit about that because Pat is a good football player," he said.

"But you know, I didn't know whether Daryll was struggling or who was struggling. I just don't think that Daryll was that bad.

"I thought he was playing a pretty good, solid football game. He hadn't thrown an interception until that last one, and that was a tough call."

Clark had suffered a concussion in his last outing, at Ohio State two weeks previous. Paterno admitted he and his staff were worried enough about Clark's health that they didn't feel fully comfortable turning him loose.

"We're not running him as much," Joe said.

"He got banged up, and he runs tough … (but) we were doing very well. You've got to remember, we were averaging 40-something points (per game) …

"I didn't see any reason for us to do a lot of different kinds of things and particularly expose him to a lot of hits. We didn't think it was necessary to do that.

"I think now we're probably going to have to drift away a little bit from that, start the guy running the ball a little bit more. That was one of the reasons why (Derrick) Williams was inserted in there as kind of a backup guy."

Which of course raised the question: Why not Devlin as a backup guy? If you take Clark's running skills away, how much better is he than Devlin?

"He's not that much better than Devlin," Paterno said. "But I don't want to start moving guys all over the place because we lost a game by one point on the last play of the game."

The question, of course, was about making a change during the game.

There are so many little things that go straight to history's dustbin if you win, but loom huge if you don't.

Paterno could have chosen to go with the wind in the fourth quarter. He admitted he's second-guessed himself there.

"But, I thought we had pretty good control of the ballgame," he said.

"In the first half we were the dominant football team. I think we had the ball 23 minutes of the first half, 24 minutes of the first half.

"So when we had to make a decision at halftime, I said, "we'll be all right, we'll just keep playing our game. Now, if I don't make that decision, who knows what's going to happen?"

Little things. Defensive end Josh Gaines missed the fourth quarter Saturday with an ankle injury. Drew Astorino, a safety who's the fifth defensive back in nickel packages, didn't play much with wrist injury.

No Gaines meant Aaron Maybin, essentially a pass-rush specialist, had to be an every-down end. It showed down the stretch.

A.J. Wallace, in the game when a healthy Astorino probably would have been, was burned horribly, biting on a pump-fake on an Iowa touchdown pass.

Paterno said both Gaines and Astorino "should be OK," this week.

Speaking of which, the season only seems over. Penn State can still win the Big Ten and make the Rose Bowl. Indiana comes to Beaver Stadium at noon Saturday.

The press conference was perhaps three-quarters over before anyone mentioned that.

"Thank God," Paterno said.

"What do they say, 'deal the cards again?' I'm ready to deal."

E-mail: mgross@lnpnews.com