THE NITTANY LEOPARDS

There will be some wholesale changes around this blog now that the curtain has officially come down (with a thud) on the 2008 Penn State football season. We'll switch gears from the gridiron to the hardwood and join the 12-2 men's basketball team on its quest for a bid to the NCAA Tournament in March.

First, a few thoughts on the 2009 Rose Bowl...

The USC Trojans are good, better than at least I expected. A perfect gameplan by Pete Carroll and his coaching staff was executed perfectly (for at least one quarter) by the team, and that proved to be Penn State's undoing in Pasadena.

As Penn State fans know, Joe Paterno's philosophy has always been to play a fundamentally sound, mistake-free game and bank on the fact that the other guy will get frustrated and make mistakes. Think back to the 1987 Fiesta Bowl against Vinny Testaverde's Miami Hurricanes. The 'Canes racked up tons of yardage against Penn State, but thanks to a hard-hitting secondary, a perfectly placed zone coverage scheme and pressure from the guys up front, Miami made a ton of mistakes and Penn State's 14 points were enough to win a national championship.

How about the Ohio State game earlier this season? Freshman Terelle Pryor got greedy on a third down play in the fourth quarter with his Buckeyes up by three. Instead of just diving into the hole for the sure first down, he tried to stiff-arm Mark Rubin and go around end for a game-changing big run. We all remember how that turned out as well as Pryor's decision later in the game to throw into double-coverage in the end zone.

USC never pressed in its game on Thursday, and it didn't have to. Penn State's three second-quarter possessions ended when the Lions failed to convert two third-and-shorts (maybe having Evan Royster and Dennis Landolt would have helped) and Stephon Greene fumbled after a thirty-yard catch and run. Had Penn State been able to extend any one of these drives, it would have bled a few more minutes off of the clock at the least, which could have helped to keep the ball out of USC's hands and keep their offense out of the endzone. Who knows if the game would have been different had PSU been facing a smaller deficit in the second half.

As far as the argument that Penn State should have changed from zone to man coverage or stopped running the football; a leopard cant change its spots and you can't change what you've done all year to get you to 11-1 and a conference championship. This game was lost when Penn State couldn't get pressure on Mark Sanchez with its defensive line. Tom Bradley is not the kind of coordinator to design elaborate blitz packages and you can't expect Penn State, after weeks of preparation, to scrap its gameplan because it fell behind by a few scores.

I think the long layoff hurt Penn State more than anybody would like to admit, but the storyline for this game begins and ends with the absolute perfect execution of USC in the second quarter. If there's a silver lining to come out of this game it's that this team had a taste of greatness, but ultimately came up short - that usually can create hunger in a football team to recreate that feeling of accomplishment. Hunger coupled with the motivation of losing on the big stage could be a potent combination for future success (think Penn State 1985 team that got beat in the Orange Bowl by Oklahoma and bounced back the next season with another undefeated regular season and a national title in 1986).

Another positive for Penn State that might come out of the game is the underclassmen that were considering moving on to the NFL, may reconsider after the subpar showing and return to make the team even better in 2009.