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psu football

By Derek Levarse dlevarse@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
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It’s only fitting that the weather matches the mood.

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Plenty of rain and general gloom is scheduled to accompany Penn State on its return to Beaver Stadium, nearly a month after the Nittany Lions last played there.

Even with a – to put it mildly – struggling Indiana team serving as today’s opponent, there’s some concern that some of the depression from last Saturday’s stunning collapse at Iowa could carry over.

“If you’ve got a good squad with good leadership, we’ll be OK,” coach Joe Paterno said. “And I think we do. Now, that doesn’t mean we walk on the field and we beat Indiana, because Indiana will come here ready to win. We’re gonna have to play well. We’re gonna have to play better, we’re gonna have to do a better job coaching. We’re gonna have to do a lot of things better than we did last week to win.

“But I think everybody has gotta go to work and say, ‘Hey, let’s put that one behind us and go.’”

As Paterno said, whether that happens will depend greatly on the team’s leadership, of which there seems to be plenty.

It wouldn’t be a shock, for example, if this team follows in the footsteps of the 2005 Big Ten championship squad, which rebounded from a crushing last-second loss at Michigan by demolishing Illinois 63-14 the next week.

Sitting at 3-7 with wins over Western Kentucky, Murray State and Northwestern, this year’s Hoosiers team is comparably bad.

Indiana surprised many by finishing 2007 with seven wins and reaching its first bowl game in two decades, just a few months after head coach Terry Hoeppner died after a prolonged battle with cancer.

But a few high-impact players like receiver James Hardy and cornerback Tracy Porter have gone off to the NFL. And many of the players still on the roster are injured or a bit banged up.

That’s particularly evident at quarterback where both Ben Chappell and Kellen Lewis could see some time. Lewis has been slowed by an ankle injury and Chappell exited last week’s 55-20 loss to Wisconsin with a head injury.

As one might expect, those injuries have led to plenty of inconsistency. The Hoosiers trailed Wisconsin by just one at halftime of that last game before Chappell fumbled and was knocked out of the game on a scramble.

“Indiana looks like a very good team at times. Other times they look awful – they’ve killed themselves,” Paterno said. “They were moving the ball against Wisconsin in a heck of a football game, and a kid puts the ball on the ground and a Wisconsin kid picks it up and runs it 40, 45 yards and that gets them all out of whack.

“They hustle. They’re in the process of getting better, as a lot of good young teams are. One week they play very, very well, and the next week they play very well in parts of the game. I think they’ll be very tough for us. I think everybody will be very tough for us right now. When you get licked, people get encouraged, and I think that Indiana will come in here with a very determined group of kids.”

For the Lions, the focus is still very much inward. Nearly every unit turned in its worst performance of the season out in Iowa. Quarterback Daryll Clark struggled mightily, but it didn’t help that his blocking was lackluster and his receivers dropped several passes.

On defense, Penn State was unable to get much pressure on the quarterback, especially as Iowa drove for the winning field goal in its 24-23 upset victory.

But first, the Lions have to get their heads on straight.

Though the national championship game is almost certainly out of reach, the Lions can still win their second Big Ten championship in four seasons and head to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 1994 season.

That alone would make this senior class one of the most successful in recent program history.

“There’s still a lot of fight in our players,” senior captain Derrick Williams said. “No one expected us to be in this position, and now we can still win the Big Ten and go to the Rose Bowl. We could be the only (class) in Penn State history to have two Big Ten titles.”

PSU GAME DAY

Indiana (3-7, 1-5)

at No. 8 Penn State (9-1, 5-1)

Noon, today, Big Ten Network

Beaver Stadium, State College