Elliot – we expect a full report (with pictures) of today’s events. Hope you’re having a great one (although I hear you have classes until 9:30).
Be safe!!
What a Great Night!!!
As you all may know I just recently turned the big two one (A.K.A DRUNK) haha just kidding dad! To celebrate this wonderful occasion my wonderful cousin Shannon came out to celebrate with me and a couple of my friends down at some of the ISU bars. She felt right at home. Basically I’m just posting this to say that not only do I wish all of you could have joined us but also to thank Shannon soooo very much for driving down to celebrate a birthday I’ll never be able to remember.
Missing
I’m here. Sorry. I really only check the blog at best once a week on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Nick ties up the computer most of the rest of the time. I hope to be setting up a home office in the near future and should be on more often. I think I need to get a digital camera so I can participate in some of the mundane.
Anyway, Chris is now off to college. Started at ISU this past Tuesday. We drove him there on Friday 1/13. He is staying in Hamilton Hall. Man, I forgot how small a dorm room can be.
Yes, Larry I am jeolous of your little golf weekend. Looks like fun. I’m looking forward to the end of March whh I have plans on going to Mesquite, NV for a week with a group from my golf league. Anyone care to join me?
We had them all the way
It certainly looked like the football gods were smiling at JoePa (news alert – Joe chewed out a young reporter who called him that while down at the Orange Bowl – says he doesn’t like the name and wished he had said something years ago when it first started – PS: the name precedes JLo et al by 20+ years – personally, I think Joe started the trend 
).
The game had a typical Penn State start to it – march down the field and score then seem to retreat into a defensive shell. Joe’s teams have always played that way. If we don’t have the offensive fire power to clearly overpower you, we play not to make mistakes. Unfortunately, when you play that way you often don’t make big plays either. Plus, when you play that way you keep your opponent in the game so that when you do make the almost inevitable mistake, it can be a truly costly one.
And make a mistake we most certainly did. It came halfway through the second quarter when while nursing a 7 point lead we let down on punt coverage – 10 seconds later the game was tied. FSU fed off that electrifying punt return to force a three and out, then quickly followed it with a one play touchdown drive (that gave them two scores in 80 seconds) and we trailed 13-7 despite having dominated FSU statistically.
Before that punt return, here’s what Florida State’s drives looked like:
- 7 plays for 16 yards and a punt
- 4 plays for -4 yards and a punt
- 3 plays for 2 yards and a punt
- 3 plays for -6 yards and a punt
- 4 plays for 6 yards and a punt
- 4 plays for 26 yards and an interception
That’s 25 plays for a total of 40 yards.
Our defense is just smothering. Two years ago, Tom Bradley our defensive coordinator told me that we were going to have a pretty good football team this year – he was certainly right. Paterno certainly thought that we were going to be good. I heard from a friend of mine that works for the football program that before the season started Paterno had called the team together and told them that he thought they had the tools to be a pretty special team. He flat out said that he wasn’t talking about a B10 championship either. He told them the team could go undefeated and challenge for the national championship (we were one second away from doing that 
. The team bought into it too. At the beginning of the season, whenever they broke the huddle after timeouts they would shout “Rose Bowl” in unison. At the beginning of the year, I thought it was pretty silly on the team’s part – after the Ohio State win, I was starting to believe too.
Back to the game.
Trailing by one, the offense responded just as it has every other time this year that it needed to (at Northwestern we drove the length of the field with time running out at the end of both halves to score TDs – btw, the Derrick Williams TD to give PSU the win at the end of the game is up for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance award to be announced at halftime tonight at the Rose Bowl). This time it only took 11 seconds for them to put a toucdown on the board.
Ethan Kilmer, the kid that made the acrobatic catch in the end zone for the touchdown is an interesting story – he never played football in high school. Normally, when you hear a story like this it turns out that the kid is a big black kid from Africa who never had the opportunity to play but when he shows up in this country he’s turned into a defensive lineman where all he has to be told is “go get the guy with the ball” (see the Tamba Hali story).
Not Ethan. Ethan is a white kid from football crazy Pennsylvania. He was a basketball and track guy in high school placing in the high jump in the state championships. He went to Shippensburg expecting to run track but never went out for the team feeling burned out. After a couple of years floundering around at Shippensburg, Ethan decided that he wanted to major in Kinesiology, a major that wasn’t offered at Shippensburg so he transferred to Penn State. On a whim he tried out for the football team and made the squad as a walk-on. Two years later and he is starting at wide receiver (his athleticism is legendary, rumored to have a 48″ vertical, and several people think he has an excellent shot at making an NFL squad because of his special teams play)
So we go into halftime leading 14-13, which allows us to go back into our “let’s be ultra careful and not make a mistake” offense and count on the defense to lead us to victory. Sure enough the defense responds absolutely shutting down FSU. Here’s all that FSU could muster following the touchdown pass that they got in the second quarter.
- 3 plays for 2 yards and a punt
- 1 play for 0 yards and the half ends
- 3 plays for 5 yards and a punt
- 3 plays for 3 yards and a punt
- 3 plays for 5 yards and a punt
- 4 plays for 8 yards and a turnover on downs
- 3 plays for 4 yards and a safety
That’s 20 plays for 27 yards and -2 points, an even better showing than the first half effort. Unfortunately, we are still playing it ultra cautious on offense and the only points we have to show are the two from the defense’s safety.
Still, I’m starting to feel a little comfortable when the offense drives down inside the FSU’s ten yard line. We are sitting on a three point lead and look about to go up ten (or at least a comfortable six) with under 10 to go when funny things start to happen. All of a sudden center EZ Smith doesn’t make a snap – his hand slips on the ball and it never gets back to the QB. FSU recovers on their own 5 yard line.
Time for another human interest story – EZ Smith. Only this one isn’t as positive as the others. Joe Paterno calls EZ a nice kid and says that he really likes EZ. That’s good because EZ has been guilty of some pretty stupid off the field incidents during his PSU career. Two years ago EZ was kicked off the team for underage drinking. While that seems a little harsh for something that all of us have done, there’s more to the story. EZ was cited by a campus cop for having an open container, i.e. a can of beer, outside his on-campus apartment following a PSU football game. OK – here’s where the “stupid” starts. Exactly one week later, EZ is once again caught by the same cop again outside his apartment with another can of beer in his hand. Adious EZ – end of the season for you. Scene shifts, and it’s a little over a year later, in January of 2005. EZ and his roommates decide to play a little game of darts in their apartment. Unfortunately this dart game has a little twist. Instead of darts, they use graphite arrows and a compound bow. When the residents of the apartment next to them call the police to object to the arrows that are piercing through their apartment wall, EZ’s goose is cooked. EZ is expelled from school for the spring and summer but is allowed to return for the fall. Halfway through the season he manages to work his way out of Joe’s doghouse and into the starting lineup.
Once again, back to the game.
FSU mounts a courageous drive and manages to go the length of the field to kick a game tying field goal with under five minutes to go. The score is 16-16.
Historical note. JoePa’s very first bowl game was the Gator Bowl in 1967 against Florida State (Bobby Bowden wasn’t the coach at FSU at the time) and the game ended in a 17-17 tie. In that game, Joe made one of his stupidest coaching decisions ever. PSU was leading 17-14 late in the game when we had the ball around our own 25 yard line. The Nittany Lions were trying to run out the clock when they got what Paterno thought was a bad spot from the referee on a second down play. Paterno thought the Lions had made a first down but the ref didn’t agree. On third and inches, the Nits once again came up short and Paterno once again felt we got a bad spot. Joe was irate and in a rash moment called for the team to go for it on fourth down. This time we clearly failed to make it, FSU took over on downs. They got nowhere but they were already in field goal position due to Joe’s dumb decision and they kicked the tying field goal.
However, ties are no longer allowed in NCAA football (a rule I don’t particularly like by the way), so we played on.
Frankly, the less said about the overtime the better. Let’s just say it was an emotional roller coaster with true freshman kicker Kevin Kelly finally winning it with his 29 yard field goal – a particularly gutsy kick since he had already missed twice with chances to win the game for PSU. Interestingly, the kick wasn’t supposed to happen – it was supposed to be a fake. The Nits went onto the field with a fake kick called but Florida State didn’t line up in the alignment that Penn State expected so holder Jason Ganter changed the call at the line of scrimmage to a real kick.
The Penn State win gave Joe his 354th victory and moved him only five behind Bowden 359 victories on the all time D1 wins chart. It also gives Joe a 7-1 record going head to head against Bowden (Joe is 1-1 against Bobby at Florida State and 6-0 against Bobby at West Virginia). Bowden’s 359 wins are a sore point with Nittany Lion fans. According to NCAA rules, once a coach has coached at a D1A school for ten years, ALL of his collegiate coaching victories count on his all-time record. Bowden started his coaching career at little known Howard (now named Samford) and has 31 wins at Howard that count toward his 359. There are some that think those wins shouldn’t count. When you look at who they are against, you just might agree. For the record, Bobby’s 31 Howard wins are:
- Maryville (TN)
- Sewanee (TN)
- Tennessee Tech Freshman (yup – TT can use only freshman)
- Millsaps (MS)
- Tennessee Martin
- Rhodes (TN)
- West Alabama
- Troy State
- Gordon JC (even junior college wins somehow count)
- Maryville (TN)
- Sewanee (TN)
- Georgetown (KY)
- Millsaps (MS)
- Delta St (MS)
- West Alabama
- Rhodes (TN)
- Troy State (AL)
- Millington Naval Air Station (yup – a win over a Naval Air Station counts)
- Georgetown (KY)
- Wofford (SC)
- Delta St (MS)
- Carson-Newman (TN)
- Rhodes (TN)
- Troy St (AL)
- Tennessee-Chattanooga
- University of Mexico (yes Mexico not New Mexico)
- Louisiana College (no not LSU)
- Furman (SC)
- Carson-Newman (TN)
- Mississippi College (not the one in the SEC)
- Wofford (SC)
Somehow they don’t seem to stack up against JoePa’s first thirty (and for the historical record here they are):
- Maryland
- Boston College
- West Virginia (Bowden was an assistant at WVU then)
- California
- Pitt
- Miami
- Boston College
- West Virginia
- Syracuse
- Maryland
- NC State
- Ohio
- Pitt
- Navy
- Kansas State
- West Virginia
- UCLA
- Boston College
- Army
- Miami
- Maryland
- Pitt
- Syracuse
- Kansas (in the Orange Bowl – JoePa’s first bowl win)
- Navy
- Colorado
- Kansas State
- West Virginia
- Syracuse
- Ohio
- Boston College
I think you can understand why PSU fans object to Bowden being labeled the winningest coach in D1 history.
And now you know the rest of the story.
Congrats Penn State!
Kelly saves the day (after almost losing it)! I’m sure Larry will give us a more precise report!
End of year Penn State sports wrap-up
Just for sake of completeness, I thought I’d give everyone a final wrap-up (OK asemi-final wrap-up – we still have a bowl game left but that’s next year 🙂 ) of the PSU Fall sports scene. My hospitalization three weeks ago got in the way of my weekend posts and it turns out my superstitious fears were justified.
In case you don’t remember, Penn State’s five fall sports programs (football, women’s volleyball, field hockey, and men’s and women’s soccer) had gone through an unprecedented Big Ten season. The teams each won a Big Ten championship going a combined 49-1 with the sole loss being the football teams last second loss at Michigan. Each of the teams advanced to post season play (the football team is headed to the Orange Bowl while the other four squads all competed in NCAA tournaments.
As I reported earlier, the #8 ranked Field Hockey team was the first to taste defeat when they lost to #6 ranked American University. As I’ve also previously mentioned, UncleLar niece Natalie Berrena (shown here with me during our Santa Crawl) was named first team All-American.
The next team to fall by the wayside was the men’s soccer team. The guys won their first two NCAA matches to make it to the Sweet Sixteen but fell to Creighton in a 3-1 loss at home. That loss happened while I was in the hospital.
The women’s soccer team had more success. The made it to the College Cup, soccer’s equivalent of the Final Four, the weekend after I was hospitalized. Unfortunately, the way that the College Cup draw worked, #2 ranked Penn State had to meet #1 ranked Portland in the semifinals. Both Penn State and Portland were undefeated going into their semifinal match and the consensus opinion was that the victor of this game would probably take home the national championship. The two teams battled to a 0-0 first half tie. This was the first time all year that Portland had been held scoreless in the first half of their game. That defensive battle continued as both teams failed to score in the second half also. They continued play through two 10 minute sudden death overtimes, so after 110 minutes of soccer play neither team was able to eke out a goal. They meant that the winner would be determined by a shoot-out. Portland’s two time Hermann Trophy winner (soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman trophy) nailed the final kick of the shootout to give Portland the 4-3 shootout win. Because the game ended in a shootout, it will go into the record book as a tie. That means that Penn State becomes the first undefeated team in NCAA soccer history to not win the title. As expected Portland went on to claim the crown with a 4-0 victory over UCLA two days later.
Two weekends after my operation, the women’s volleyball team took on Tennessee in the NCAA Regional Semifinal. The regionals were being held on Penn State’s home court and the #2 ranked Nittany Lions were huge favorites to win at home and advanced to the Final Four. Unfortunately, one of Penn State’s star players, Christa Harmotta, had gone down with a season ending injury in Penn State’s last home regular season match and the loss showed. Tennessee pulled off a huge upset knocking off Penn State in four games (that made three staight weekends where one of our teams lost – all no doubt due to my failure to make my regular weekend blog post). The Lady Vols then went on to beat Missouri the next day and advanced to the Final Four.
Two of UncleLar’s volleyball buddies did receive post season honors however. Senior libero Kaleena Walters (also shown here in a Santa Crawl photo) was named B10 Ten Defensive Player of the Year and third team All-American.
Senior setter Sam Tortorello (of course in a Santa Crawl photo) was a unanimous pick as B10 Player of the Year and was also named a first team All-American.
Since the bowl game is scheduled for next year, i.e. January 3rd, I thought this would a good time to make a year end wrap up. As promissed, you won’t have to put up with all these sports reports in the future (of course, that’s partially because our basketball team sucks so much – we did beat New Hampshire (sorry Shannon) this week though).
I’m home
was released form the hospital about a half hour ago. Just enough time to let everyone know I’m all right and to still make tipoff of tonight’s ESPN ACC/Big Ten Challenge match. It’s being broadcast by ESPNU and I will be in my regular seat 5 rows behind the visitors bench – I’m on the aisle on your right.
I know my field hockey
As I predicted weeks ago, Natalie Berrena was named first team All-American by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association. It caps a wonderful career for Natalie, moving up from a walk-on here at her hometown school to being named captain and All-American her senior season. To put in in perspective, Rudy had a movie made about him and he only got in for a play. 🙂
I’ve been keeping an eye on the NFHCA website because I knew they were overdue to announce the AA’s (their website said they were going to release it yesterday), so I was actually the first to find out. I texted Natalie on her phone to let her know and got this back from her “I can’t believe it! You called it back in sept and I laughed at you… Ha! Who would have thought! I’m seriously in shock.” Nat is truly very humble and doesn’t realize how gifted she is (both athletically and artistically) so her surprise is real.
While I recognized that she was playing good hockey, I also knew that her story would hit home with both the media and coaches. “Local kid walks on, leads home team to championship” just works on all fronts – it’s a great story lead for the press and coaches can hold it up as “you too can do this” example to recruits. Plus, I know her coach well – Char really likes Nat and I knew that Char would likely choose Nat to push for post season awards, so I’m not quite as clairvoyant as I might appear.
I’m not normally a superstitious person
But since I started posting these weekend updates the teams keep winning, so I can’t stop now.
As I’ve already reported, the football team knocked off Michigan State to win the B10 title. Following the team’s return to Happy Valley (the photo on the right shows Michael Robinson carrying the B10 championship trophy into Rec Hall for a welcome back rally Saturday night), a bunch of fans took over the downtown streets celebrating the turnaround season. The B10 championship meant that Penn State had now claimed all five fall regular season Big Ten team championships, a first in B10 history (the previous record had been three fall championships).
The women’s volleyball team was in action on Friday and Saturday also. On Friday, the women swept #19 Minnesota 3-0. They followed that with another 3-0 sweep, this time over Iowa, on senior night. In the photo on the left, three of my Facebook buddies, Sam Tortorello, Cassy Salyer, and Kaleena Walters, are shown holding the B10 volleyball championship trophy (Sam and Kaleena are seniors and were honored before the match). The girls extended their B10 record to 18-0 and can close out a perfect season with away victories this coming weekend. If the girls can win those matches, and they will be heavy favorites to do so, the fall sports programs’ Big Ten record will be an absolutely phenomenal 49-1 (the sole loss be a the controversal last second football loss to Michigan).
Just for completeness sake, I must comment on the other fall sports. Field hockey’s season is over – the only think left to report is whether “Grand Niece” Natalie Berrena makes All-American or not (the announcement is due later today). Women’s soccer continued their march through the NCAA tournament with a 4-1 win over Texas A&M on Saturday afternoon (Saturday was a busy day for me – caught the Penn State men’s basketball win over Cornell at 12:30, rushed over to the soccer field to catch the end of the 1:00 women’s NCAA soccer game, headed downtown to Bill Pickle’s Tavern to meet up with friends to watch the Nit’s 4:00 football win over MSU, zipped up to Recreation Hall in time to cheer the 8:00 girls volleyball team on in the Iowa win, then closed the evening out listening to “JR and Natalie” at Cafe 210 – first set at 10:30) – it’s days like this that make me love Happy Valley). The women now meet Santa Clara here Friday – with a win they advance to the Final Four in College Station TX.
The men’s soccer team will open NCAA play with a match against Seton Hall here tomorrow. The men have earned an 11th seed but are considered one of the more dangerous teams in the tournament coming into the tournament riding a nine game winning streak holding a win over the #1 seed Maryland Terrapins and two wins over the #3 seed Indiana Hoosiers. They should be a force to be reckoned with.
Just in case you are wondering if I am going to be publishing these tomes every week, have no fear. I have no intention of continuing to type them up. It’s just that the teams have made this remarkable run this fall and I didn’t want to do anything to jinx them. Once we get the NCAA championships out of the way in soccer and volleyball, and the bowl game in football, I will cease and desist from my weekly reports.
Penn State has next
I love the title of this article
If USC or Texas stumbles, Penn State has next: “It was well after midnight, East Coast time, when the notion became clear. Hey, maybe this USC-Texas match-up in the Rose Bowl isn’t a done deal, after all. Not yet, at least.
USC’s 50-42 escape against Fresno State reinforced the reality that two more weeks of games are remaining. And even though the Trojans and Longhorns are the only unbeaten teams left in Division I-A, something crazy still could happen.
What then? What if there’s a BCS free-for-all?”