Introduction

With the offseason hiring of Mike Yurcich, Penn State welcomes its fourth different offensive coordinator in five years.  Therefore, In comparison, the fact that defensive coordinator Brent Pry is about to enter his 6th season calling the shots on the other side of the ball makes him a relative stalwart and model of stability. So today let’s analyze how he’s done leading the squad over the past five years. 

During Pry’s tenure, there have been periods of frustration – the 2017 and 2018 OSU comeback losses, the 4th quarter of the 2017 Rose Bowl, the first half of the 2020 season – but all-in-all the fan barometer of our time with Pry seems mostly positive. But what do the stats say? Are there specific areas of weakness? 3rd down defense? Pass defense against otherwise mediocre quarterbacks? Let’s find out.

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It’s been a rough year for hoops fans in Bloomington. 

Indiana, which is currently without a head coach, is watching the NCAA Tournament from home for the fourth straight year (not counting the non-tournament 2020). Hoosier fans might have felt a bit of solace watching in-state rival Purdue get bounced out of the tournament by North Texas on Friday in overtime. 

Bet they weren’t nearly as happy about it as Penn State fans were, though.

The end of Purdue’s season officially marked the beginning of Micah Shrewsberry’s Penn State tenure, and he faces several short-term obstacles in what is arguably one of the nation’s toughest long-term challenges. Just about everyone in the Nittany Lions’ regular rotation hit the transfer portal last week, and though those departures most likely have a lot more to do with players’ feelings toward the administration rather than toward the new coach, it still leaves Shrewsberry with a ton of roster-building to do.

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While We Celebrate Barry White Driving the Snakes Out of Springfield By Drinking Cheap Domestic Beer and Playing Irish Folk Music Like House of Pain on Loop, Let’s Examine Instances Where Good Fortune (and Misfortune) Shone Down on Penn State Football

Friends of the Blog know we absolutely SALAVATE when anniversaries/holidays pop up because it gives us an excuse to crank out a list no one asked for.

Oh, it’s Flag Day? Let’s rank the worst penalties ever called against Penn State.

Independence Day? Top moments in program history from 1887 to 1992.

Fungal Disease Awareness Week? Simple. Nittany Lion playmakers with the sickest feet ever.

Well, as your annoying green-clad coworkers might have told you, today is St. Patrick’s Day, so there’s no better time for us to think back and whip up a collection of Lucky and Unlucky plays from Penn State’s recent past. Our simple criteria: Lucky plays had to occur during significant Penn State wins and factor heavily in that win (so plays like Chris Godwin’s lucky juggling circus catch in the Rose Bowl didn’t make it). Unlucky plays, the exact opposite — bad breaks that happened during losses…mostly (we made an exception at the end).  

After you read, let us know what plays we missed in the comments section or on our Twitter @fortheblogy. Heck, we might do this again next year.

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The Big Ten is a tough basketball conference on a yearly basis, and just might be the toughest conference in the country this year. Five Big Ten teams are currently in the AP Top 25, with four of them in the top 10 and three in the top five. Joe Lunardi, who does this for a living, has nine of the league’s teams as 95% locks for the NCAA Tournament field.

Penn State, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, is not among those nine. Yes, the Nittany Lions should have and assuredly would have played in the tourney last year had one actually been played, but the last time they actually played in one, Talor Battle was a 22-year-old lead guard, not a 32-year-old assistant coach. The Nittany Lions have never, since joining the Big Ten in 1992, made the NCAA field in consecutive seasons, despite (or because of) playing in a conference that regularly sends at least seven teams to the tournament each year. 

As a long-suffering hoops program prepares to turn another page, it’s as good a time as any to ask: What should realistic and reasonable annual expectations be for Penn State men’s basketball?

Contending for conference championships?

Finishing in the top half of the league?

 Making the NCAA tournament in most years?

Making it every two or three years?

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Frankly, Your Guess is as Good as Ours…

Are We Sure Noah Cain Will Be ‘Good To Go’ Sept. 4?

Fingers crossed it’s just a coincidence and we’re proven to be idiots (first time for everything, right?), but we’re 94.7 percent sure Noah Cain didn’t participate in winter workouts, meaning he’ll be sidelined for the entirety of spring practice. How did we arrive at such a precise number? Well, we just made it up…but there’s valid reason for concern about Cain’s status. 

Stealing a page from my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Collier’s playbook, Penn State position coaches doled out ‘Special Student of the Day’ Gold Stars on social media throughout winter workouts. Here’s one posted from PSU RB Coach Ja’Juan Seider’s Twitter account praising Devyn Ford’s effort while reminding us the federal eviction moratorium ends March 31:

Winter workout #4 #LawnBoyz of the day went @TsunamiFord. He brought that 🔥🔥🔥🔥today. #RentIsDue pic.twitter.com/HfB1Mpu7vf

— JaJuan Seider (@coachseider) February 25, 2021

Gold Star for Ford.

Gold Star for Keyvone Lee.

Three Gold Stars for Grad Transfer John Lovett.

But no Gold Star for Cain : ( 

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Spring is arriving in State College, which usually means just a little bit more daylight when you leave work or class at 5 p.m. … and it’s still 35 degrees outside.

Fortunately for the Penn State football program, that also means spring practice is arriving again after an extra-long hiatus. The Nittany Lions will open their 15 allotted spring practices on March 15, and they can’t come soon enough for a group that, for both understandable and still-inexplicable reasons, came nowhere near its potential last fall. 

Yes, with apologies to Allen Iverson and Ted Lasso, we talkin’ bout practice, man. But there are several areas where the Nittany Lions should directly benefit from those workouts – whether they include a Blue-White Game or not – after they missed out on them last spring.

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Winter Workouts are in Full Swing and Official Spring Practice Starts Two Weeks From Today. Assuming Plans Proceed Without Any Hiccups (No Jinx) Here’s a Handful of Nittany Lions Who Might Make the Most of This Return to Routine

While news of failed NFL coordinators turned toothless offensive analysts (seriously, who cares?) made headlines last week, a pretty darn important nugget somehow slipped through the cracks:

SPRING FOOTBALL IS BACK!

On Feb. 23, Sean Fitz of 247 Sports/Fight On State and Ryan Snyder of Rivals/BWI both reported that Penn State’s 2021 spring practice schedule is set to commence on March 15 and (knock on wood) will consist of the usual 15 organized sessions. As of this time, it’s uncertain whether the traditional Blue-White game will be one of those 15 practices, but considering BTN is starved for content I’d bravely wager this site’s entire revenue since inception – yep, all $24 of it – that Penn State has some sort of formal offense vs. defense scrimmage. 

Any takers?

As you ponder whether to nibble at that high-stakes cheese, we stepped back and took a big picture view of the Penn State roster to see which players might benefit MOST from a somewhat normal spring football calendar.

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It’s hard to argue that Penn State’s administration could have handled Patrick Chambers’ ouster much worse, and that we haven’t seen the last of its effects.

 The encouraging thing? In the grand scheme of things, it won’t matter much.

When athletic director Sandy Barbour chose to part ways with Chambers last October, it not only left Penn State’s players and remaining coaches scrambling to get ready for the season, without any real answers, but it also cast a pall over the Nittany Lions’ future, effectively putting the parking brake on recruiting. Jim Ferry and the remaining staff and the players deserve a lot of credit for a collective effort that won’t put Penn State in the NCAA Tournament but did earn the respect of fans and Big Ten peers.

Poorly timed as it may have been, though, Barbour’s decision also opened a door of opportunity for a program that can still count the highlights in its 29-year Big Ten history on one hand: The Nittany Lions now have the chance to hire a difference-making coach and, perhaps more importantly, the chance to pay him like one.

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What defines the health of a major college athletics program?

Is it success in every sport?

Is it the ability of its teams to generate revenue, through tickets sold or television contracts?

Is it the rate at which its student-athletes graduate?

Or is it simply how good its football team is?

The answers differ depending on whom you ask, and most athletic administrators would lobby for an “E. All of The Above” option. But if your answer to the last question is “pretty good” or better, chances are your athletic department is in good shape.

On Friday, Penn State’s Board of Trustees voted, by a comfortable margin, to push through plans for an eight-figure renovation of the Lasch Building, also known as Nittany Lion football headquarters.

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