Category: Schools

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In case you didn’t see this before

About 10 days ago, in my “Ken – remember this?” post, I said:

Just like this year, PSU was hot in the middle of the football national championship picture

Gary came back with:

BTW, Is PSU really “hot in the middle of the football national championship picture “?

And I responded:

Most definitely we are. We are fifth in the BCS. That means we need three teams in front of us to lose to get into the BCS championship game.The four teams ahead of us and their remaining games are:

Miami: @Wake Forest (4-6), Geo Tech (6-2), Virginia (5-3), then Fla State (7-2) in the conference championship game – none of those games are easy and it will be tough for them to win all four games (Fla St has already beaten them once).

Alabama: LSU (7-1), @Auburn (7-2), and a conference championship game against either Georgia (7-1) or Florida (7-2). Alabama’s offense is atrocious – they haven’t scored a TD in 13 quarters and it would be a big surprise for them to record three wins against the teams they have yet to play.

Texas: Kansas (5-4), @Tex A&M (5-4), and a conference championship game against Colorado (7-2). Anytime you have to defeat three teams with winning records there is a decent chance you could lose. The favorite has a history of losing the conference championship in the B12 so it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see the Longhorns go down.

USC: @California (6-3), Fresno State (7-1), and UCLA (8-1). While Southern Cal looks to be the strongest contender for the national championship they do have challenges ahead of them. None of those teams are pushovers and UCLA would just love to knock their cross town rivals out of the BCS picture.

Penn State on the other hand has two weeks to get ready for their sole remaining game with Michigan State (5-4). MSU is in their usual late season collapse having lost 4 of their last 5 games. We should be able to handle them easily and just sit back and watch the others fall by the wayside.

The good news is that only three of the four teams in front of us need to lose. There is a very good chance that could happen.

Here’s an update of what has happened since:

Just as I suggested, we were able to beat Michigan State and capture the B10 title and secure a berth in a BCS Bowl. Which bowl is still up in the air.

Last week, Alabama lost to LSU in overtime and dropped out of the national championship picture.

Yesterday, Miami lost to Georgia Tech and their national championship hopes have been dashed.

So two of the three things that needed to happen have. We just need one more and we almost got that late last night (people were glued to TV’s in the bars here in State College last night as the USC/Fresno State game didn’t end until 2:15AM).

Southern Cal staged a furious comeback and managed to overcome Fresno State 50-42 in a game that saw them trailing 42-41 in the fourth quarter (Fresno State had also led at halftime 21-13). USC looks beatable and they have crosstown rivals UCLA in two weeks.

Texas was off this week but they have always dangerous Texas A&M and their famed 12th man next week, then a conference championship matchup with Colorado in two weeks.

That means there are three chances for an upset to happen – I’d say odds are about 50-50 that one of the upsets will occur – and Penn State can claim a spot in the national championship game in the Rose Bowl (there is also an outside chance that LSU could sneak by us with a win in their conference championship game).

Realistically, there are now only five schools with a shot at the title. USC and Texas still have their destiny in their own hands. Win out and they are in. Penn State’s season is over and we sit just on the outside waiting for one of the two to fail. LSU not only needs one of the top two to falter but they also need to win out and start getting some love from the BCS computers. Virginia Tech remains a very big long shot to somehow sneak into the game – they probably need both teams on the top to lose and have LSU also lose while they win out and meet Penn State for the title.

So that’s a long winded way of saying “Yes, Gary we very much are in the middle of the national championship picture.

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NA-TA-LIE

Two weeks ago, the Penn State women’s field hockey team had their final home game of the season against Ohio State. The weather was kind of miserable, damp and overcast with a slight drizzle, but I went up to the game anyway because it was senior day – i.e. the day when they honor the graduating players – and it would be the final game that Natalie Berrena would play at home for Penn State plus she was going to sing the National Anthem for her fellow seniors before the game.

When I got up there, I ran into one of Natalie’s friends, Lisa Plesko, who was on the phone when I got there. As I walked up, she snapped her phone closed clearly irritated. When I asked what was wrong, she shrugged her shoulder and shook her head saying she was really pissed at her friends. When I asked why, she pulled up her jacket revealing a shirt with a big NA on it saying that she had made up these shirts to wear for Natalie but her two friends were hung over and complaining about the weather so she didn’t think they were going to make it to the game. I told her not to worry, I’d fix the problem.

I was quite willing to don a shirt plus I knew another kid, Jason Mattia, at the game who I was sure I could talk into it without any trouble – he had graduated last year but had been a PA announcer for the field hockey team the year before so he knew Natalie and a bunch of the girls. Plus one of the gigs that he had here at PSU was to dress like Captain Morgan for various promotions around town, so I knew he would be an easy sell. It took all of two seconds for him to agree. We all decided to wait until halftime to put the shirts on.

As it turns out, one of Lisa’s friends did show up right at halftime, so we did need Jason’s services (you really didn’t think I’d be the one to sit it out did you?). We changed into the shirts just before the start of the second half and stood by the fence at Penn State’s end of the field hoping she would notice us. As luck would have it, just seconds into the second half there was an out of bounds play right in front of us. The ball was off a Penn State player, so Ohio State had possession and had to inbounds it right in front of us. Natalie stood defending about 15 yards away and, since we were right behind the inbounding Ohio State player, had a direct view of us. Right in the middle of the play, she spots us and just starts shaking her head laughing. We couldn’t have planned it any better.

She called me this afternoon and told me that someone had sent her a photo of the three of us. She had copies made for us and I went over tonight and picked up mine.

Here I am, just living a “LIE”.

PS – Natalie received another honor today when she was named to the National Field Hockey Coaches All Region first team. She has an excellent shot at making All-American and it would be a fantastic way to end her field hockey career.

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No football game but still plenty of sports news

While Penn State didn’t play football this weekend there still was plenty of news in both other sports and on the pigskin front. In the middle of the “Ken – remember this?” thread, right after Gary questioned my comment about PSU being in the middle of the national championship picture, I documented three things that needed to happen for PSU to get into the national championship game (well, three things out of their control, four things if you count beating Michigan State as one of the requirements). Well one of them happened as Alabama went down to defeat at the hands of LSU, so now Penn State sits fourth in the BCS standings. That leaves two to go with three weeks of football left.


One sports season came to an end on Saturday. The 8th ranked Penn State women’s field hockey team went down to defeat to 6th ranked American University in NCAA playoff action.

Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year Natalie Berrena scored the first goal of the game to give the Nits a 1-0 lead but American came back with 3 straight goals and eventually won 3-2 eliminating the Nits from the NCAA tournament.

The girls’ loss turned out to be JR Mangan’s gain. Immediately following the game held at the University of Maryland, the team returned to State College where Natalie was able to join her band “JR and Natalie” for their second and third sets at the Cafe 210 here in State College. This time, Uncle Larry finally remembered to bring his camera and caught the band in action. This is my favorite shot from the batch. 🙂


The women’s volleyball team swept two matchs over the weekend, sweeping both Purdue and Illinois. With the Illinois win, the girls clinched their third straight and ninth overall Big Ten title.

Speaking of Big Ten titles, the men’s soccer team added the Big Ten Tournament title to their regular season title by shutting out both Michigan State 2-0 and defending national champion Indiana 1-0. Indiana had been the #2 ranked team in the county coming into the game. They had lost only one game all year – not so coincidently that game was to Penn State and it happened on national TV in Bloomington. This is the first time ever that Penn State has beaten traditional national power Indiana twice in a season. The Nits also own a win over #1 ranked Maryland so they must be considered a force to be reckoned with during the NCAA tournament which starts this weekend (Penn State will find out who their opponent is when the pairings are announced at 5PM today – UPDATE: PSU received a ninth seed, thus earning a first round bye and will host the Hartwick/Seton Hall winner on Tuesday Nov 22nd). The two B10 titles capped an unbelievable turnaround for this team which lost 5 and tied 1 in their first six games of the season. At the beginning of October this team had 3 wins 7 losses and 2 ties. Since then they have won TEN in a row and are a legitimate threat to win the national title – nobody is playing as well as they are right now.

And while we are on the subject of NCAA soccer we can’t overlook the PSU women. As a result of their loss in the Big Ten tournament the women slipped to #3 overall in the national soccer rankings. However, they have bounced right back and have already defeated two opponents, Bucknell 6-0, and West Virginia 5-2. The girls will now meet Texas A&M in Sweet Sixteen at a site TBD.

The four B10 wins over the weekend brought our fall sports overall B10 record to 45-3. We have now totalled five B10 championships (four regular season crowns and one tournament crown) and can bring the total to six with a win over Michigan State by the football team this weekend. Quite a successful Fall and certainly worthy of an entry in the “Legends of the Falls” (pun intended) Blog.

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Penn State vs. Notre Dame?

UncleLar (BroLar),

So what are the odds and what has to take place for Penn State to end up playing Notre Dame in a bowl game? I’ve got a household full of “golden domers”, not to mention Mary Ann’s entire family. I’d like nothing better than to watch Penn State beat Notre Dame somewhere on New Year’s Day.

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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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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.