TodayLamenting over, Lions push forward
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Article RatingThe players and coaches can all talk — would have, should have, could have — but the bottom line is last week’s loss by Penn State to Iowa is over and the focus now shifts to a possible Big Ten title and Rose Bowl berth.
The first of two final regular season contests brings Indiana (3-7, 1-5) to Beaver Stadium for a noon kickoff Saturday.
A win there sets up the last contest against Michigan State for the Big Ten crown and the conference’s automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series. So, undefeated season gone, yeah, there’s still a lot to play for if you are Penn State.
“I’m looking forward to getting this thing going again,” Nittany Lions head coach Joe Paterno said. “I reflected on some of the tough games we’ve lost through the years.”
“I think you feed on your players and hopefully they feed off me and our staff. I was pleased with the way they came out (Monday). We didn’t have any pads on them but we got some things tied down and I had felt after the football game that I hadn’t done a particularly good job for them. I think we’ll all bounce back.”
Paterno was ready to look toward the Hoosiers despite one of the toughest losses he’s endured in the last decade. Consider that as of last Saturday, two of Paterno’s last four teams are a total of three seconds away from being undefeated.
“Saturday night was a tough night for me, no sense in kidding you on that,” Paterno said. “Football games are tough on me regardless of why. You go out there get in the cart, go across the field, and it’s all, then you’re back in and then you fly home and all that stuff and then you get home and you play the game 10 times in your head.
“That’s tough. You don’t get any sleep Saturday nights. I’ve never had trouble sleeping the night before the game, but I’ve always had trouble sleeping after the game whether we win or lose. In that sense it was tough. But Sunday afternoon, you’ve got to get your head on. I was looking at Indiana-Wisconsin T.V. tape, which we take off the (satellite), the T.V. tape on Sunday morning.”
If there is a silver lining in all that’s transpired since Saturday, Paterno’s team can focus on another Big Ten championship and BCS berth if they win out.
Several players are holdovers from the 2005 team that shared the conference crown with Ohio State and eventually went on to win the Orange Bowl.
“Well, they have to understand that some of the seniors and some of the kids who were redshirted back in ‘05, those kids have been to three bowls, won three bowls in a row, and if they can pull this off this year, they could win two Big Ten championships in the four years that they were here, which is pretty good doing. So, I think that we’re trying to keep things in perspective. Obviously it’s tough to go all the way. There’s a lot of football still to be played by a lot of people around the country and I think we just peck away. We think about Indiana, make sure we’re ready to play Indiana and not dreaming about other things or moaning about the things that might have been. The saddest words of all were ‘might have been.’ So, I think we’ll be OK. I really do.”
The loss to Iowa has also drawn comparisons to that of the 1999 loss to Minnesota in the closing seconds, ironically by the same score and ended the same way.
That Penn State team went on to finish the season with two more losses.
“Well, that was a different kind of cast of characters. We had more superstars. We had the first and second guy drafted in the draft. We just got a little bit... again, that’s 1999. To me, that’s years ago because there’s been so many kids that we’ve had to work with and play football with. So, it’s hard for me to remember exactly why we weren’t able to get that club to regroup and go on and win some games.
“Part of it is the personality of the people that played who were used to doing a lot of big-time things and had some big-time plays. I’m not so sure what happened, whether they got distracted by agents calling and all those kinds of things. I don’t know and it would be unfair for me to say it was that or what. I really don’t remember. I do know know, we obviously took a real flop. And, I’m going to try to prevent that, obviously, here.”
Paterno also felt his starting quarterback Daryll Clark was being too hard on himself. After Saturday’s loss Clark apologized to Penn State fans for his performance against the Hawkeyes. He finished 9-of-23 for 86 yards and was picked off late in the game, a turnover that led to Dan Murray’s game-winning field goal with one second left.
“I told him that yesterday on the practice field,” Paterno said. “I think he’s doing fine. They dropped passes on him, you know we haven’t been dropping any passes, that’s the other thing when you talk about why we’re not being a little more productive offensively.”
Paterno said the coaches inserted Derrick Williams in the ‘Wildcat’ formation to run the ball to prevent Clark from taking hits against the Hawkeyes. Clark spent the bye week recovering from a concussion sustained against Ohio State. Paterno also thought about using backup Pat Devlin at times against Iowa.
“I just don’t think that Daryll was that bad,” Paterno said. “I thought he was playing a pretty good, solid football game. He hadn’t thrown an interception until that last one and that was a tough call. He had the guy open but he was throwing into the wind. The coaches have to take a little blame for that. We were trying to get the ball close enough to where we could get a field goal into the wind.”
“I can talk, talk, talk, but the players, if you’ve got a good squad with good leadership you’ll be OK and I think we do. That doesn’t mean we walk on the field and we beat Indiana because Indiana will come here ready to win. We’ll have to play well.”
About the Hoosiers, who are coming off the loss, Paterno said like most young teams they look good and they look like they need some work.
“They were moving the ball against Wisconsin in a heck of a football game. Kid puts the ball on the ground 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.”
“I think they’ll come and they’ll be tough for us. I think everybody will be tough for us right now because when you get licked, people get encouraged. I think that Indiana will come in here with a very determined group of kids.”
NOTES: Saturday Paterno said he considered sending tape of the game to the Big Ten’s head of officiating Dave Perry to review the pass-interference call against safety Anthony Scirrotto. “I thought it was a bang-bang call. I don’t think you could feel like it was a real bad call. It could have gone either way obviously,” Paterno said. “I think the intentional grounding was a tough call, when we had the kid trapped and we didn’t get the intentional grounding call, and there were a couple of other calls but you’re going to get that every game.”... defensive end Josh Gaines, who left the Iowa loss with an ankle injury is listed as “probable” for Saturday’s contest. Paterno said Gaines did not practice Monday and also added that “We’ve got a couple of kids bumped and bruised that I’d rather not talk about because they’ll play, but how much they’ll get to practice, I’m not sure yet and I think we’ll have to play that by ear.” He did not allude to who those players might be. Gaines is the only active player listed on the injury report.
