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With unbeaten Penn State ranked seventh and one-third of the way through its regular season, coach James Franklin is getting antsy.
He wants to see the Nittany Lions (1-0, 4-0) improve every day and avoid complacency as they prepare to face new Big Ten opponent UCLA (0-2, 1-3) Saturday at noon (TV-FOX) at Beaver Stadium.
“We have to get better each week, individually and collectively,” Franklin said Monday. “We have to get better, there’s no doubt about that. I don’t want to be one of those teams that waits until you have a loss for the wakeup call to happen.”
Penn State has a couple primary issues, namely too many penalties and too many missed field goals.
The Lions were flagged seven times for 76 yards in their 21-7 victory over Illinois last Saturday. They rank 83rd in the country with seven per game and 96th with 66.0 yards per game. No. 1 Alabama, by the way, is worse in both categories.
Nevertheless, Franklin wants to see more discipline from Penn State players.
“That’s just making things harder than things need to be on offense and defense,” he said. “You take the penalties out of the (Illinois) game, the ones that we can control, then that game wouldn’t have been as hard as it needed to be.
“We have been a disciplined team. We need to get that fixed.”
And the placekicking. Sander Sahaydak, the Liberty High School grad, missed two 40-yard field goal tries and was replaced on the final extra point by Ryan Barker.
Sahaydak has made just 2-of-5 attempts this season and 3-of-9 in his career. Barker, a redshirt freshman from Kennett High School, and Chase Meyer, a transfer from Tulsa, will compete with Sahaydak in practice this week.
With games against USC, Wisconsin and Ohio State coming up, Franklin wants to have a dependable kicker.
“Sander had won the job during training camp,” Franklin…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/penn-state-james-franklin-pushes-034700734.html
Author : Reading Eagle, Pa.
Publish date : 2024-10-01 03:47:00
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