Penn State Nittany Lions Archives - The Confluence at Jollybengali.net

My 2015 Wishlist for Pitt and College Sports

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Jan 022015

I consider myself as a lucky sports fan. At least I’m not a Cleveland sports fan. I can find hope without looking too hard. BUT! C’mon, everyone wants some of their teams to do better. So here’s my wishlist for college sports in 2015. Click here for last year’s wishlist. Seeing as how we are dealing with the passions and whims of 18-23 year olds, as you can see, I was totally on the mark. Er sumfink.

Pitt Football

UPDATE, post-Armed Forces Bowl: For Gawd’s sake, my biggest wish it to stop the Pitt-ing! But… but… perhaps in order for Pat Narduzzi to change the culture, to remake Pitt into a contender, first they needed to get all the crazy out of their system. To pull an all-time soul-punching moment… ie, giving up a 21 point lead with 3 minutes left via two successive on-sides kick recovery failures and giving up a 2-point conversion. I’ve been a Pitt fan for over 2 decades and this is definitely the most PITT of PITT-ings.

Also, eff you Matt House. Please, don’t even bother coming back to clean out your things. And whoever coaches special teams for Pitt. I think that was Chryst, wasn’t it? It’s cliche to say that the seniors deserved better because Houston also has gone through a coaching change but seriously, these seniors deserved better!

Narduzzi should have come down on to the field in the final quarter, c*nt punched House and taken over the defense himself.

Better recruiting and 8-4
- I’m truly excited about Pat Narduzzi getting the Pitt job. I don’t think Paul Chryst was a bad choice but his tenure was pretty underwhelming. The guy knows how to build an offense but his not-insignificant disinterest in recruiting on the defensive side handicapped the development of the program.
- Narduzzi is, of course, known for his fast, aggressive defenses but just as important is that he embraces recruiting. Pitt’s defense won’t be fixed in one recruiting cycle and there’s only so much one can do with better coaching.
- Next season’s team should be able to win a minimum of 8 games, even with a little in growing pains. Should. This is still Pitt, after all.

Pitt basketball

Further Maturation and the NCAA tournament
- Coupled with the Maui Invitational and the ACC-B1G challenge and Pitt is “only” 10-3 coming out of their non-conference schedule. This is one of the youngest teams that Jamie Dixon has ever fielded. He’s playing way more freshmen and sophomore than he’d like. But there’s so much to like and hope for in this team.
- Sophomore Mike Young is probably the most consistent of the youngsters; he’s a great finisher and is really coming on strong. Jamel Artis & Josh Newkirk have been inconsistent but give glimpses of becoming really solid players. Ryan Luther is only a freshman but he plays hard and once the light comes on (albeit probably next year), he’s going to be a really strong force. James Robinson has been more aggressive this year and Cameron Wright is rounding into form coming off injury. Pitt’s achilles heel is not having a proper Center though. Joseph Uchebo plays hard and has shown glimpses of the player he could have been but that’s it -“could have been”. Derrick Randall is just, well, no.
Continue reading »

Pitt, PSU, WVU – Defensive Comparisons

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Nov 062014

After comparing Pitt, Penn State & West Virginia’s offensive numbers, here forthwith are the defensive stats for the local teams:

	Yds	Yds/G	P Yds/G	R Yds/G	Pts	Pts/G
Pitt	3006	334	176.8	157.2	237	26.3
PSU	2712	339	261.9	77.1	170	21.3
WVU	3501	389	212.6	176.4	231	25.7

Here are where each team ranks in the country:

	Pts/G	Yds/G	P Yds/G	R Yds/G
Pitt	t-66	20	8	60
PSU	9	3	23	1
WVU	61	64	46	85

A couple quick conclusions:

Pitt’s defense hasn’t played badly but they’re not good enough to make up for the offense’s passing shortcomings.

Penn State’s defense seems to have played quite well but has been let down big time by its offensive troubles.

It’s hard to say whether West Virginia’s defense is any good because they play in the Big XII. They seem to have a defense that’s just good enough to allow them to win with that great offense.

Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia – Offensive Comparisons

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Nov 042014

Well, I think it’s safe to say that my ‘middle-ground’ CFB predictions for the local college football teams shall not come to pass. Pitt sits at 4-5 and so they could still make it to 7-5, which was my pessimistic prediction and even that would be optimistic at the moment. This is a typically mediocre yet schizoid Pitt team. All bets are off at this point. WVU sits at 6-3 and should get to 8-4 at the least with the way they’re playing. Free drinks for Holgorsen at any bar in the Granite State! Penn State, at 4-4, has been just as awful as Pitt since opening up at 4-0, maybe more so. Losing to Ohio State and even to Michigan is one thing. Losing to Northwestern and Maryland though. No Penn State team should ever have that happen. That’s Pitt’s job to succumb to tragically mediocre competition, damnit.

Looking at the offensive statistics for the three teams confirms our picture of the team’s overall records. (I’ll do defense in another article). Pitt runs the ball well. WVU is explosive through the air. Penn State neither passes nor runs particularly well.

Quarterbacks:

	CMP	ATT	TDS	PCT	YPA	TD	INT	SACKS	QBR
WVU – Clint Trickett	233	345	2925	67.5	8.48	18	7	20	151.9
PITT – Chad Voytik	125	204	1470	61.3	7.21	11	6	17	133.7
PSU – Christian Hackenberg	183	318	2038	57.5	6.41	7	10	30	112.4

	Rushing
	ATT	YDS	AVG	TD
WVU – Clint Trickett	34	-84	-2.5	1
PITT – Chad Voytik	83	355	4.3	2
PSU – Christian Hackenberg	64	-49	-0.8	0

WVU’s Clint Trickett was bound to succeed in Morgantown eventually, if for no other reason than a guy named Clint Trickett just belongs at a school like West Virginia. Well, that and Holgorsen. I hope Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg is paying attention in class and taking his education seriously because his numbers this year are not up to par for an elite QB. Pitt’s Chad Voytik is the only first year signal caller out of the three and it’s showed for most of the season; overall a mixed bag but I’m still optimistic about him.

Next, Receiving: Continue reading »

Why Your CFB Team Sucks – Penn State

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Sep 202014

Inspired by Drew Magary’s NFL preview series, Why Your Team Sucks on Deadspin, I decided to do a little of the same on the college side.

Some people are fans of the Penn State Nittany Lions. But many more people are NOT fans of the Penn State or don’t really give a shit about them. This preview is for those in the latter group.

Your Team: Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions

Your 2013-2014 record: 7-5 with no bowl game because… well, ya know.

Your Coach: James Franklin. At a time when the university needed to keep to the straight amp; narrow established by Bill O’Brien, they hired a guy with a sexual assault case hovering over his Vanderbilt program. Franklin may very well be clean but do you trust the vetting process at Penn State? No? I didn’t think so.

Have you ever heard James Franklin speak? Franklin is an insanely good recruiter and may very well win a lot at Penn State. (He should win a lot at Penn State. It’s Penn State for chrissake). But he sounds like the sleazeball illegitimate love-child of Les Miles & Todd Graham.

“I’ll tell you what, getting off that bus with the extended tradition that we’ve added, walking into the stadium, I’m an emotional guy and I was fighting back my emotions the whole time,” Franklin said about his first game at Beaver Stadium. “Getting a chance to see my girls as soon as I got off the bus and walking with them and watching the fans and community support these guys, it’s an unbelievable experience. So I was fighting back my emotions. The sunglasses helped.”

It’s understandable that students or alumni would get goosebumps hearing their school’s alma mater. But they’re not another mercenary coach who also allegedly cried when he beat a path out of Nashville for State College. Surely, people don’t still fall for this song & dance anymore, do they.

Your Quarterback: True Sophomore Christian Hackenberg. A legitimately elite recruit who somehow convinced himself that the school that gave us Todd Blackledge, Anthony “the Genius” Morelli and the Sacca brothers was the right place to hone his quarterbacking skills.

What’s New that Sucks: Penn State is going into this season trying to protect its best weapon, Hackenberg, with an offensive line returning one player. Yikes.

Other than that, nothing. There’s nothing new about Penn State. It’s all old, all staid. This is a program and a fan base that hasn’t changed one fucking bit since Rip Engle ~~was shuffled loose the mortal coil~~ turned over the reigns to Joe Paterno.

What Has Always Sucked: State College. It exists solely for the university. It’s not a real place. If one more person tells me, “But it sure is purrdy cuntry up thurr”, I might scream. Oh wait, I can scream – ARRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! You know what’s also pretty? West Virginia, NYC’s finger lakes, townies who have all their teeth and cars that don’t have blue & white lion pawprints tattooed all over them. James Carville once concluded that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh in the West, Philadelphia in the East and Alabama in the middle. Guess what lies in the exact geographic center of the Commonwealth. Continue reading »

Penn State are still Penn State

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Sep 102014

In an article for SI regarding the NCAA’s decision to lift Penn State’s bowl ban and scholarship restrictions, Zac Ellis writes:

The problem was that the bowl ban and scholarship reductions didn’t affect anyone responsible for Sandusky’s actions. Those sanctions didn’t punish the likes of former Penn State president Graham Spanier, late football coach Joe Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz, whose actions — or lack thereof — were at the heart of the scandal. What the NCAA’s decision did was take opportunities away from prospective scholarship athletes at Penn State. These are players who had nothing to do with Sandusky or the school’s administration. The NCAA forced the next Penn State regime — in this case, Bill O’Brien and his new coaching staff — into an extremely difficult situation of recruiting fewer kids into a program that couldn’t go bowling for four seasons.

Ellis is correct that the penalties levied against Penn State didn’t punish Spanier, Paterno, Curley or Schultz and did punish Penn State’s football program and future players. But punishing rule breakers (in this case the institution of Penn State football) often does have collateral and deleterious downstream effects.

Those who would point out that the NCAA had no juris-my-dicktion in this case have a point. But they’re also, in effect, saying that the football program should not have been punished at all. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the football culture at Penn State became so big and so important that it led to the actions which caused the scandal, which led otherwise good men to look the other way while heinous acts were committed. Penn State is a fine academic institution but football should never be as big as it is there; that’s called lack of institutional control. It had to be taken down a peg.

And the folks who have bought into the myth of “Success with Honor”, who worship(ped) at the altar of Joe Paterno and all he wrought have stood screaming into the wind while the rest of us watched, disappointed and horrified. They still think of Penn State as Shangri-La. This level of fidelity, emulated at other prominent football-centric schools around the country, is sad but not unique. If the folks at Michigan or Texas or Alabama think that it couldn’t happen at their institutions, they’re wrong, so wrong. Not because they’re inferior people (we’re all Fallen) but because they are simply people.

Perhaps I’m just screaming into the wind. While it’s possible (hopeful) that the core workings of the Penn State administration have changed, I have seen nothing in the intervening years to dissuade me from believing that Penn State football isn’t still the biggest, baddest cat in town. Folks who were once just a bit chastened are now dancing in the streets, believing that their institution is fully redeemed or that the NCAA’s jealous vendetta against poor, innocent State has ended. I guess a few more years of sanctions wouldn’t have changed the culture at Penn State, any more so than sanctions have changed Ohio State, Alabama or USC in preceding years. So let the kids go bowling. #Dominate.

Penn State Football Goes Outside of the Family, Hires James Franklin

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Jan 132014

Penn State football head coach James Franklin

So yeah, Penn State may just have knocked it out of the park. They went out and got a phenomenal recruiter with ties to PA and the northeast and an excellent game coach. Who will eventually leave them for the NFL. (Don’t think it’ll happen? He called it his Dream Job. Yeah, he’ll leave someday soon for his next dream job).

From what I read, Penn State wanted Miami Hurricanes head coach Al Golden. They may or may not have gone after (former) Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Munchak. Both alums. Then they turned to a non-alum, James Franklin, once-upon-a-time the head-coach-in-waiting at Maryland (wow, don’t they fell dumb right now) and author of back-to-back 9-win seasons at Vanderbilt. Seriously, Vanderbilt. The only ones doing a better job than Franklin did at Vanderbilt at similar academic institutions are David Shaw at Stanford and David Cutcliffe at Duke.

The drawback to the Franklin hiring is the specter of the sexual assault cases pending against a number of his former players. Most accounts say that he didn’t know and then booted those players pretty quickly from the Vanderbilt football team. It’s doubtful to me that this will have much of an effect on Franklin’s tenure at Penn State unless he’s somehow called to testify in their criminal cases.

Still, let the kool-aid drinking begin for Penn Staters. Enjoy it while you have him. Just don’t think he’ll stay for 20 years. Or even 10 years. No one does.

My 2014 Pitt and College Sports WishList

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Jan 022014

Pitt football

Better recruiting on Defense. I expect that Paul Chryst and his staff will continue to build the offensive lines and reel in quality offensive recruits. That’s evidenced by getting 4-star RB Chris James as well as offensive linemen Mike Grimm and Alex Bookser. But I just don’t see those studs coming in on defense. Matt House took some pretty harsh criticism for the defense this year. Some of it was deserved, some not. But Pitt’s whiffed on some local kids who would have helped out a lot on defense. And that comes down to House’s and the defensive staff’s ability to recruit. He has to get better there. No amount of coaching ’em up will help if there aren’t capable players behind the schemes and instruction.
Paul Chryst’s growth as a coach. Chryst needs to become a better game day coach. Some of that is getting his guys in and up to speed. Some of it is just better in-game adjustments. There are times where you see what his offense is capable of. Games vs Duke and ND. The near comeback against UNC. The bowl game vs Bowling Green. I like Chryst and believe he can become a great long-term coach but he has continue to grow as a coach.
Tyler Boyd contending for the Biletnikoff Award. He had a monster season and with the emergence of Manasseh Garner and return of JP Holtz, I expect that Boyd will continue to put up big numbers. (Especially if he’s left in to return punts or kickoffs).
8-4 regular season record. Simple and easy. Winning more will improve recruiting, improve the morale of fans and draw more people to Heinz Field. It will show tangible proof of the growth/regeneration of the program. Avoid pulling a Pitt more than once next season and 8 wins is doable. Navy should have been a win. Same with Georgia Tech. That there would have given Pitt an 8-4 regular season record.

Pitt basketball

A strong ACC season. The ACC is not as strong as the Big East once was. It isn’t. Not this year at least. It ain’t no picnic either but Pitt’s been down this road before. I expect that Pitt, warts and all, should be in the top half of the conference. Outside of Duke, UNC and Syracuse, whom should Pitt fear? NC State, UVA, ND, UMD – good teams, yes. But not other-worldly programs. Fourth place is there for the taking. Continue reading »

Bill O’Brien To Usher Penn State into the Club of Ordinary Programs

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Dec 302013

So it looks increasingly likely that Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien will be flying the coup. I’m honestly surprised it’s happening so soon. Not necessarily because I thought he’d see out the sanctions period. But because I didn’t think he’d become a serious candidate after only two years. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done yeoman’s work for PSU. I just didn’t think NFL teams would come calling so soon.

Even if O’Brien doesn’t jump ship this offseason, it’s a strong bet that he’ll leave very soon thereafter.

If I was PSU looking for his successor, I would stay clear of 49ers Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman and (former) Tampa Buccaneers Head Coach Greg Schiano, two names which garnered interest in their last coaching search. I’d even stay away former Pennstater and current (for now) Tennessee Titans Head Coach Mike Munchak. These are NFL guys. That’s where they want to be; at the supposed pinnacle of football coaching. (Personally, I don’t think that coaching, as opposed to playing, in the NFL is the peak of the profession though let’s leave that for another day).

Penn State Head Coach Bill O’Brien