3 Reasons Why Penn State WON on Saturday

The 1st edition of 3 Reasons Why Penn State won is finally here! Took them long enough. Overall I thought the game was pretty well played and the players performed much better than I was expecting them to. This game will give everyone just enough confidence to be completely deflated if Wisconsin wins next Saturday.

1) The Running Game- A stellar performance by the Penn State running backs, I wasn’t aware of the Austin Scott situation until I finally got to my seat the students around me informed my friends and I, needless to say I was speechless. Rodney Kinlaw showed up to play, carrying the ball 28 times, a bit too much for my taste, and ran for 168 yds and 2 TDs. Evan Royster, filling in for the absent Austin Scott, ran for a nice 86 yards on only 16 carries. This against a defense that was very solid against the run, after giving up 256 yards to Penn State the Iowa Rush D dropped to only 30 in the nation. The running game set up the rest of the game and put Penn State in a position to win.

2) The Defense- A great showing by the defense, now the Iowa offense isn’t exactly led by Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush but nevertheless the Defense played great, here are some stats from Saturday: 5 sacks, 3-16 3rd down conversions, 48 yards rushing, the Iowa offense only had the ball for 23 minutes. The defense owned the game on Saturday.

3) Anthony Morelli- Now I know that he almost threw the game away in the 4th with those 2 lousy interceptions (don’t you kinda feel like he made a bet with someone that he would throw 2 and then had to make up for it in the 4th since he couldn’t throw one before that?) But after getting some really harsh criticism from the student section, I led some of the booing too, he made some very nice throws, Namely the long toss to Butler, sticking it right over his shoulder, the pass Chris Bell dropped was perfect, and the throw to D-Wills for the TD was also nice. Overall he was Ok, made some bad decisions but also made some pretty good ones too.