Author: UncleLar

The head orphan and eldest surviving member of the Fall Family Clan.
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Ken – remember this?

First a little background:

Dick Harmon of the Deseret News (out there in Ken’s neck of the woods), a voter in the new Harris Poll, which is part of the BCS ranking system, voted PSU the #17 football team in the country this week. That has raised the ire of many PSU football fans (see this Centre Daily Times Blog post), caused numerous rants and rages on PSU internet forums, generated a plethora of emails to Harmon and his superiors, and even inspired this column by a local sportswriter, Dave Jones.

This paragraph by Dave caught my eye (my emphasis added)

Harmon writes for the Deseret News, one of two papers in Salt Lake, is 52 and has been writing about college football for three decades. He also exposes his ballot every Monday on the Deseret News site, deseretnews.com, which is more than you can say for most Harris voters, let alone the opaque coaches who let underlings fill out their ballots every week on the other poll with understood directives never to vote that Son of a Gun from So’n’so State above No. 24.

The underlings line hit home.

Back in 1972, a friend of mine was a sportswriter for a local paper here in State College and was a voting member of the Associated Press Basketball poll (he shall go nameless because he’s still in the business and just might want to regain his AP vote some day). Right around this time of year he was supposed to submit his ballot for the preseason AP poll. Just like this year, PSU was hot in the middle of the football national championship picture (at the time we were 8-1 and 7th ranked – we wound up 10-2 losing to #2 Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl – USC won it all at 12-0). Just to show you some things never change, basketball took a back seat to football and my friend asked me to put together a preseason ballot for him because he was too tied up with football coverage. I quickly agreed.

At the time, the AP’s list was a top twenty and you only voted for the top 15. I quickly dove into my research (if only the internet existed back then I could have been much much more thorough). I came up with fourteen teams without too much trouble but was having a hard time settling on a 15th. Then I had a brainstorm – Ken was going to school at Illinois State and he had told me they had a pretty good team, why not do him a favor and plug them in at #15. So be it. I then called him up and told him that as long as his team kept winning I would guarantee that they would appear in the “among those also receiving votes” category.

Damn, if that little school didn’t keep winning. For the first couple of weeks, my little vote meant that they were at the bottom of the “others” category but, after a while, lo and behold they started getting votes from others. They eventually got to about 11-0 and were getting close to the top twenty when their bubble burst and they lost. I would like to think that my original vote caught the attention of other voters and they started to pay attention to the Redbirds as they maintained their winning streak. If it weren’t for me maybe they wouldn’t have gotten any national exposure that year.

Without that exposure, maybe no one would have noticed their 6’6″ guard that was lighting up the conference, eventually earning him a consensus All-American spot and a first round draft by the Phila 76ers which he parlayed into a long time basketball playing, coaching, and broadcasting career. Yup – if it weren’t for me, Doug Collins wouldn’t be where he is today. He owes it all to me.

All kidding aside, I actually had a lot of fun watching Illinois State make me proud of that vote that I initially cast for them. That year also gave me an appreciation for how difficult a job it is to be a voter, particularly in those days when there was no way to see most of the teams you actually were voting for. The only thing you could base your vote on were scores that rolled across the wire services. Even finding a game story was extremely difficult then.

It is easier now but it’s a daunting task and I don’t envy the guys that try to do it (that’s why I am a fan of the computer polls – that and because I’m a computer geek to begin with). At least guys like Dick Harmon put their vote out there for all to see (and thus get some feedback). It’s the secret votes that bother me the most. You can also bet that some of those votes, particularly in the preseason, have as much validity as my “my little brother goes to school there” vote.

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I’m really beginning to dislike Michigan

First their literal last second play three weeks ago turns out to be the only thing standing between us an an undefeated season. Our win over Wisconsin this weekend has jumped us to #5 in the BCS. If Michigan hadn’t beaten us we would probably be #3 just waiting for someone to screw up a little so we could jump into the national championship game.

The Michigan had to go through a monkey wrench into our other sports too. On Friday, their women’s soccer team handed #1 Penn State their only loss of the season avenging an earlier Penn State win. The game was decided on a 4-2 shootout after two periods of overtime failed to decide a winner (that’s a hard way to suffer your only defeat). Michigan went on to win the B10 tournament crown but PSU is still the regular season champ.

Then on Saturday, the Michigan field hockey team knocked off the #1 seeded PSU women’s field hockey team 2-1 in the B10 tournament semifinals. And just like the Michigan women’s soccer team, their field hockey team went on to claim the tournament crown while we had to be satisfied with the regular season title.

At least our #3 ranked women’s volleyball team continued on a roll. They claimed two B10 wins in the last week defeating Ohio State 3-0 and Indiana 3-0. The ladies remain undefeated in Big Ten play with a huge three game lead in the standings.

The B10 champion men’s soccer team didn’t have a conference match but they did knock off #19 Hartwick 2-0 in a warmup for next weekend’s B10 tournament.

Our 3-2 all sport conference record over the last week moves us to 41-3 overall in conference play (5-3 against Michigan, 36-0 against everyone else), still an incredible performance by our fall sports teams.

The football team is off next weekend, the mens soccer team will take on the winner of the Michigan (yes them again)/Michigan State match in the B10 tournament, the women’s soccer team and women’s field hockey teams commence NCAA championship play, while the women’s volleyball team continues conference play with matches at Purdue and Illinois.

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"Grand Niece" Natalie Berrena honored by Big Ten


Natalie was named the Big Ten Field Hockey Offensive Player of the Year for captaining the Nittany Lions to an undefeated Big Ten Championship. Penn State Coach Char Morett claimed Big Ten Coach of the Year honors also.

I’ve known Natalie for about six years. While she was in high school, she worked at the Tavern where her paternal grandfather was a bar part time bartender (as I’ve mentioned before, her maternal grandfather was John Bach a former Penn State basketball coach and current assistant coach with the Chicago Bulls). I also dated her mother for a while after I moved back to State College.

It’s been interesting watch Natalie develop from an overwhelmed walk-on freshman to the All Big Ten (and probable All-American) player that she is today. I can remember during her freshman year, Natalie coming to me frustrated saying that the only reason that she was on the team was that her coach Char was good friends with Tavern owner (and my former roommate) Pat Daugherty and was just doing Pat a favor by letting her walk on. While that wasn’t true (Char is a good friend of mine and when I specifically asked her she said “absolutely not – Natalie just doesn’t realize how good she is”), it was an indicator of how insecure Natalie was at the time.

Since then her self confidence has grown considerably but she still remains quite unassuming. She was genuinely surprised when she was named one of the team’s tri-captains at the beginning of the season – and she was really overwhelmed when I told her that Char had leaked it to me that she was actually the leading vote-getter for captain. Typical of Natalie, she underestimated how popular she was with her teammates.

Now she’s adding “rock star” (the nickname given to her by her field hockey teammates) to her personal portfolio. Her musical career seems to be following the same path as her athletic career. Two years ago, with a ton of coaxing, you might get her to tackle a tune at a karaoke night or, if you were really lucky, she would belt out one of her personal compositions on her keyboard at home. Nowadays, she’s front and center as the lead singer for the “JR and Natalie” band. Once field hockey season is over and she has more time to practice with the band, she’ll be playing keyboard with them and they’ll be doing some of her original songs (she was positively gushing the other day when she told me how exciting it was to hear the whole band doing her music during practice sessions.

Next challenge for her? Maybe the world of fashion. “W Magazine”, a New York based monthly was on campus a couple of weeks ago interviewing Natalie for a feature on college fashion and style. They took a bunch of photographs of her and her apartment but whether the article makes it to print or not remains to be seen. Considering the roll that she is on now, I wouldn’t bet against it. One thing is for sure, if Nat makes the magazine, you’ll hear about it here first.

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Bride of Chucky II

Chucky was out prowling Monday night looking for a new bride.

Some of the contenders were:

Chiquita Banana Aunt Jemima
Catwoman Pocahontas

Chucky even had to fight off the Burger King for this one:

For more photos of Chucky’s exploits, go here.

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An almost perfect weekend

Here we go with my weekly PSU athletic report. I really didn’t plan on doing this on a weekly basis but we just kept winning and the superstitious side of me said “don’t do anything different”.

Friday afternoon started off with the #6 ranked women’s field hockey team travelling to #9 Indiana to take on the Hoosiers in a match to decide the #1 seed in the conference tournament. Penn State had already clinched at least a share of the title but Indiana could have tied them with a victory. However, the women were not to be denied. They won 4-3 in overtime, their school record 17th straight win, to become the third Penn State athletic team to lock up sole possession of a Big Ten Championship.

Then later Friday night, the #3 ranked took on #11 ranked Wisconsin here in Happy Valley. The women were the only undefeated team in the conference and came into the match with a two game lead over Wisconsin. The ladies knocked out a 3-1 victory over Wisconsin to get a stranglehold on the conference title a little over halfway through the season.

Saturday the football team remained atop the conference with a 33-15 win over Purdue. Penn State controls their destiny in their hunt for a BCS bowl bid. Win the next two games and they will be headed to either the Fiesta, Orange, or Sugar Bowls. The victory sets up a huge battle for next Saturday when Wisconsin comes to town. Wisconsin and PSU are currently tied atop the conference and Saturday’s game will go a long way toward determining the conference champ. On the national scene, Penn State will move up to #8 in the BCS rankings when they are announced tomorrow.

On Saturday night, the women’s volleyball team hosted Northwestern in a conference battle. The ladies won easily in a 3-0 sweep of the Wildcats. The win not only kept the team undefeated in league play but it gave them a 3 game lead in the championship race virtually insuring that they will claim a third straight league title.

On Sunday the 20th ranked men’s soccer team took on Michigan. The men had already locked up the Big Ten title but this battle was to ensure that they finished the season undefeated within the conference. Sure enough, they prevailed 3-2 in overtime.

The men’s soccer game was the final Penn State Big Ten conference battle of the weekend and left the Nits with a perfect 5-0 conference all sports record and stretched our athletic teams records to an absolutely incredible 37-1 in conference play. We have locked in three B10 titles (field hockey, mens soccer, womens soccer), have a solid three game lead in volleyball, and control our destiny in football. No Big Ten athletic program has ever claimed all five fall team titles but we have an excellent chance of doing so. Also, all five of our programs are ranked in the top twenty in their respective sports and no other school in the country can currently make that claim.

While conference play was finished for the weekend, there were still two other contests to be held. The #1 ranked womens soccer team had already locked in their Big Ten championship but they went on todefeat Navy 5-0 in their final match of the season to remain the only unbeaten untied team in the nation. This was the first perfect season in the short history of the womens soccer program.

Lastly, the #6 ranked and Big Ten Champion womens field hockey team traveled to Chapel Hill to take on the #3 ranked Lady Tarheels in a big intersectional battle. Unfortunately, another perfect weekend was not to be when the girls lost a heartbreaker to North Carolina 3-2 in overtime. The loss ended the girls school record 17 game winning streak. The girls ended their season at 17-2 and will go for the Big Ten Tournament title beginning Saturday.

Almost a perfect weekend, but 7-1 is pretty darn good anyway.

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Credit where credit is due

Penn State has been receiving lots of good press because of their spectacular implementation of the “White Out” theme at the Ohio State game this year.

The reality of it all is that we really weren’t the ones that started it. We kind of borrowed the idea from Michigan who has been alternating “Maize Outs” and “Blue Outs” at the football games for four years. The Michigan football team picked up the “Maize Out” idea from the Michigan Hockey team.

The Michigan hockey team undoubtedly got the idea from the Winnipeg Jets who created the promotion for the 1986 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

One of the more effective color implementations was a Texas A&M “Red, White, and Blue Out” shortly after 9/11.

However, as good as out “White Out” was, it really can’t top the Michigan “Maize Out” shown below.

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Now that winter has arrived…

it’s time to shift to my “other job”.

I’m fortunate in that my two passions don’t overlap their seasons. Warm weather months get dedicated to golf – I’m a little off this year with only about 80 rounds played, normally I’d hit over 100 but the asthma knocked me out for a month. Cold weather months see my focus switch to Penn State basketball (practice started 12 days ago).

A friend of mine, Tim Beidel, runs a website, PennStateHoops.com, dedicated to the Nittany Lion basketball program. Tim resides in Portland Maine and started the site years ago as a way of remotely keeping up with the basketball program. He was frustrated that he had a really hard time finding information anywhere about Penn State basketball team and realized that others must be in the same boat so he started the site.

I started buying season basketball tickets when the school built our basketball arena, the Bryce Jordan Center in 1995. Like Tim, I lived in New England and couldn’t find any info on PSU basketball. I started trolling around the web and stumbled onto his site then. It was a godsend for those of us looking for PSU BB info. I started hanging around the site then, occassionally posting to the site forum.

A few years down the road, I met Tim and we hit it off (90%+ of the people on these boards I wouldn’t want anything to do with but Tim is an exception). We’ve been able to get together once or twice a year since then, either for a summer golf tournament, fall football game, or winter basketball game. Despite Tim being a married non-drinker and me the polar opposite we get along quite well (in addition to sharing a common perspective on Penn State basketball, our political and social views seem to jibe 100%).

Tim runs the website as a hobby and it’s become quite popular among the PSU hoops community. Fortunately, Tim has been able to keep the lunatic fringe often found on internet boards at bay (he even got some nice props in a story by a Harrisburg sportswriter). Penn State has numerous former players playing professional ball in Europe who use the site to keep up to date with the team. We also have recently been recruiting heavily in Europe – we have three players on the squad from overseas – and their friends and families use the board to keep track of their hometown heroes.

Over the years my contribution to the board has grown. In addition to regularly posting on the aforementioned forum, I have assumed responsibility for tracking our recruiting efforts by maintaining the “UncleLar Recruiting Matrix”. The matrix is a compilation of published reports of whom Penn State is targeting with their recruiting.

By NCAA rule, a school’s coaching staff can’t comment on anyone that they are recruiting. That creates a huge void which is filled by numerous internet recruiting services (for both football and basketball). The two biggest are the Rivals Network and the Scout Network. Each of these networks is a conglomeration of individual school sites which are run by local professionals. Blue White Illustrated runs the Penn State site on the Rivals Network while Fight On State is the Scout Networks Penn State site. Both of those websites are run by local professionals who also publish local magazines.

However, this area is so football oriented that staffs of BWI and FOS give short shrift to basketball, even during basketball season. That has opened up a niche within a niche for Tim’s board and he is able to put together a better product as a hobby than either of the professional organizations can. As evidence,

Tim’s board receives 10 times the traffic that either the BWI basketball board or the FOS basketball forum does and my recruiting matrix is also more complete that either the BWI recruiting table or the FOS table.

With basketball season just around the corner (we have an exhibition game next Thursday), basketball recruiting activities will pick up and I can settle into my “second job” just as my golf “job” winds down.

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It’s a winter wonderland…

but I’m too damn lazy to go out and take photos. Woke up today with about an inch of snow on the ground and more falling. Fortunately, the ground temp is above freezing so most of it is melting but it is sticking to vegetation.

By now the temperature have risen enough (my outdoor thermometer says 34) that it’s turned to rain but the higher elevations are getting hit with snow – the forecast for the area says the precip will shift back and forth from rain and snow all afternoon with accumulations up to 6-9 inches in the surrounding mountains.

Many of the trees in the area still have a substantial number of leaves still on them so I expect numerous power outages from falling limbs as the snow accumulates on the tree branches.

This is the earliest significant snowfall that I can remember for a while.

ED Note: I knew if I waited long enough I could find shots on the web. Here’s one from on campus – to see more go here.

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We own the Big Ten

Another great Fall (no pun intended) weekend of sports here at Penn State.

The football team romped over Illinois 63-10 after leading 56-3 at halftime. The win was Joe Paterno’s 350th at Penn State. QB Michael Robinson was responsible for 6 TDs in the first half (4 passing – 2 running) – he did not play in the 2nd half. Penn State controls its destiny in the Big Ten. If they win out, the claim at least a share of the Big Ten title and will be the conferences representative in a BCS bowl game.

The undefeated and #1 ranked womens soccer team knocked off Michigan 4-2 on Friday. On Sunday, they defeated Michigan State 3-0 to claim their eighth straight Big Ten soccer title. Tiffany Weimer scored in both games to tie then break Brandi Chastain’s NCAA record of scoring in consecutive games. Tiffany’s record is now 17 straight (unfortunately, Portland’s Christine Sinclair has also scored in 17 straight and she has a chance to extend it to 18 tonight). Tiffany also broke former PSU star Christie Welch’s Big Ten record of 82 career goals.

The men’s soccer team also won a Big Ten title this weekend by knocking off Michigan State 1-0 in double overtime, their third consecutive B10 overtime win. Like their female counterparts the men are undefeated and untied in Big Ten play. However, unlike the womens 8 titles, this was the men’s first B10 conference title. Of course, we are recent members of the B10 and while the men may not have had any B10 titles before they have won 11 national titles while the women are still looking for their first.

On Saturday, the sixth ranked women’s field hockey team won their 16th straight game setting a new Penn State record. The 2-0 win over Ohio State clinched at least a share of the B10 title for the women. The game featured a “Natural” type moment when Penn State was awarded a penalty shot on a foul by Ohio State. It was late in the first half and PSU led only 1-0. Senior Mallory Weisen is on crutches due to a stress fracture but coach Char Morrett called for her to take the shot. Dropping her crutches Mallory hobbled onto the field and lifted a shot over the Ohio State goalie to give PSU a 2-0 lead. The ladies will travel to second place Indiana on Friday to attempt to win the B10 title outright.

The third ranked womens volleyball team went on the road this weekend defeating both Iowa and 12th ranked Minnesota. The ladies remained unbeaten in B10 play and now hold a commanding two match lead over the rest of the conference in the race for the title.

That means over the weekend, out athletic teams went 7-0 in conference play, won two big ten titles outright, won a guaranteed share of a third, and remain in the drivers seat for two others (the combined conference record for the five squads is 33-1). A pretty good weekend overall.