PSU Preview: Temple

Game 4

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Saturday, Sept. 20. 12 noon est. Beaver Stadium



On Saturday, the once-pathetic Temple Owls come to State College to face your 15th/16th ranked Nittany Lions. Although they’re still not a “good” team, Temple is nonetheless competitive and will be the best team that the Lions have faced so far in 2008. The Owls are led by competant head coach Al Golden, who was a standout tight end and captain for Penn State in the early 90’s. Golden also coached linebackers for PSU before becoming defensive coordinator at Virginia under Al Groh. Former Lion LB Mark D’Onfrio is also on the Temple staff as the coordinator of their defense.

When you put all of the nice connections aside, what you have is a Temple team that would love to make up for 2 straight tough losses with an upset of heavily-favored PSU. You also have a State team that would love to use Temple as its fourth straight punching bag. Although the former isn’t out of the question, the latter is 99% sure to occur.

When PSU is on offense: all you’re going to see is exactly what has made this offense so successful for the first 3 games…our offense steamrolling the Owl defense.

When PSU is on defense: PSU must continue to dominate the line of scrimmage, and get to Temple QB Adam DiMichelle, who could be the most talented player on the Owls. Interestingly, DiMichelle started his career at PSU, but transferred. Not unlike our other opponents, Temple will be overmatched; PSU’s D just needs to limit mistakes, and whack DiMichelle around. It would also be great if the coaches decide to finally sit strong safety Mark Rubin, and replace him with redshirt freshman Drew Astorino. Astorino is a good, smart player, and is much better than the liability Rubin.

When it’s 30 seconds before kickoff at Mad River: don’t even think about getting the beer special. Your ass can wait 30 seconds.

Bottom line: this one shouldn’t even be close. PSU’s offensive and defensive lines have dominated the first 3 games, and this one shouldn’t be an exception. I’d imagine that the 2nd and 3rd string guys will get good playing time in the second half, but one must start to wonder: does that help or hurt us when our first stringers will be expected to play 4 quarters against a more quality opponent?

Knits Pick…

Temple: 10

PSU: 56


Game Notes…

1. The PSU offense, as you know, has been very impressive. Check these out…
-PSU is 4th in the nation in scoring
-PSU is the only team in the country to rush for more 270 yards a game and pass for more than 260 a game. Wow.
-this is the first Nittany Lion team since 1994 to score more than 35 points in each of its first 3 games.

2. Evans and Karoma did not practice this week. Again.

3. Saturday, the return of the lime green vest.





LET'S GO STATE!!!