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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> with four sacks, all in the fourth quarter when the Hoosiers were trying to mount a comeback. Shareef Miller had totaled six sacks and 10.5 tackles for loss through Penn State's first 10 games, and the Lions have also gotten sacks from backup ends Daniel Joseph and Jayson Oweh. The Indiana game, in which Toney and Matos combined for all six of Penn State's sacks, was a taste of what Franklin hopes to see going forward from a defensive end rotation in which the six players on the current depth chart will have a combined 13 seasons of eligibility remaining after this year. "Those two guys played well" against the Hoosiers, he said. "I think there's going to be confi- dence that comes from that, and we can grow and we can build on it. That will be the plan." Listed at 6-foot-3, 241 pounds, Toney has often been portrayed as a situational player. If so, the In- diana game was his kind of situa- tion: The Hoosiers needed points late in the game, and they needed them in a hurry, which meant that they needed to throw the ball downfield and hope that they could hold off Penn State's hard-charging pass rush. They weren't able to do that, and Toney was a big reason why. Even so, Franklin thinks that the scouting report on the redshirt sophomore might sell him a bit short. "He's not the biggest guy, so I think sometimes we don't give him enough credit for what he's able to do in the run game," the coach said. "But I think that's the next step, to get more tackles on nor- mal downs, get more tackles for loss on normal downs, get production when it comes to sacks early in games, and then be able to do it when it matters most, which is what he was able to do at the end of the [Indiana] game in a critical situation." At 6-5, 259 pounds, Gross-Matos al- ready has prototypical size, and he's been putting it to use lately. His surge began at Indiana, a game in which he led the Nit- tany Lions with 10 tackles, including a pair of sacks. It continued against Iowa, as he gave the Hawkeyes' offensive line fits all afternoon, finishing with nine stops, four of them for negative yardage, and two more sacks. Gross-Matos's num- bers in those two games – 19 tackles, four sacks – surpassed his totals from the team's first six games put together, and he followed with nine tackles and two sacks in Penn State's next two games against Michigan and Wisconsin. The sharp uptick made it appear as though a switch had been flipped. Not so, Gross-Matos insists. As far as he's con- cerned, the swagger that he's brought to Penn State's most recent games was there all along. "I don't think my confidence has grown," he said. "I've been confident the whole time, so I just go out there and make plays." It's a quiet kind of confidence, as Gross- Matos is hardly the most outspoken player on this year's team. He came to Penn State last year from Chancellor High in Virginia, where he was a dominant player as a senior, racking up 18.5 sacks to bring his career total to a school-record 37. After his commitment to Penn State, his father advised Penn State fans to brace for a big impact. "The upside," Rob Matos said, "is ridiculous." But there was a somber undercurrent to Gross-Matos's success. When he was 10 years old, a sudden thunderstorm inter- rupted a Little League baseball game in which he had been playing alongside his older brother Chelal. As the storm moved in, Yetur and younger brother Robby headed for a nearby car. Their mother, Sakinah Matos, went to get Chelal, who had been playing catch with a teammate as the players left the field. That's when the lightning struck. Yetur remembers a thunderclap so loud that it felt as though DROP ZONE Miller lowers the boom on Wisconsin quarterback Jack Coan. Penn State sacked Coan five times in a 22-10 victory over the Badg- ers. Photo by Steve Manuel

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