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of an 85-man scholarship roster, and those players weren't the only ones who decided to pass up their remaining Penn State eligibility. The Lions also saw five players leave early to enter the NFL Draft. Even with 23 prospects arriving in the in- coming recruiting class, including 11 who are already on campus as early enrollees, James Franklin's team will likely go into the upcoming season with fewer than 85 recruited scholarship players. Those diminished numbers have raised some concerns, but the questions have more to do with depth than with the composition of the starting lineup. Only two of the exiting players – Johnson and Polk – have ever been starters, and both struggled to hold onto the ball last year, giving rise to a youth movement at wide receiver. While it's likely that Johnson would have returned to the first-team unit after an injury-plagued junior sea- son, Polk might not have figured promi- nently in the coaches' plans for 2019. Of the other transferring players, only Miller, a backup to Cam Brown at out- side linebacker, was higher than third- team on PSU's Citrus Bowl depth chart. Two of the players – Jenkins and Tor- rence Brown – were introduced to the crowd on senior day. Still, the Nittany Lions need more play- ers, and here's where the transfer portal could end up working to their advantage. As of press time, graduate transfer re- ceiver Lawrence Cager of Miami was said to be looking at the Lions. Cager, who stands 6-foot-5, 215 pounds, made 12 starts for the Hurricanes last season, catching 21 passes for a career-high 374 yards and a team-best six touchdowns. A Baltimore native, he's also looking at Ne- braska, Georgia and Iowa State. The Lions have also been in contact with graduate transfer offensive linemen Ryan Alexander of South Alabama and R.J. Proctor of Virginia. Alexander stands 6-4, 308 and has made 28 starts during the past three seasons. A Long Island native, he has re- ceived offers from Syracuse and Rutgers and is reportedly looking to make a deci- sion by March. The 6-4, 335-pound Proctor started six games at left guard for the Cavaliers last season. Penn State will have plenty of competition to land him, as he's also being courted by Ohio State, Texas, Florida State, Arizona State, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. But even though the transfer portal could provide some assistance as the Lions look to fill some of the holes that have opened up in their depth chart, Franklin has a few misgivings about the new process. The previous rules might have given too much power to coaches, but have the new ones created a differ- ent problem by ushering in something akin to free agency? Franklin worries that that's exactly what has happened. He has talked about compromise solu- tions that would continue to give players more autonomy without taking coaches out of the process entirely. What if coaches could still block transfers, but only to a limited number of schools, or only to schools on upcoming schedules? "Part of the reason we got to this situ- ation is that you had a small number of coaches who were abusing the ability to block kids from transferring to schools," Franklin said. "So we went from coaches being able to block you [from going] anywhere to now no blocking, just free agency. To me, there could have been a model that made sense. It could have been the NCAA coming out and saying you can't go to any school that's on the schedule but you can go anywhere else. Or the school can block five schools and that's it. "But we went from one extreme where the coach could block anything to the other extreme where you can't block any. And the problem that I see with the NCAA and the member institutions sometimes is that we overcorrect. … There was a model that could have been a sweet spot in between the two of these so that we're not the situation we're in right now." ■ Penn State and Massachusetts are set to renew their men's basketball and football series, meeting on the hard- wood for the first time since they were both members of the Atlantic 10 Con- ference. The Nittany Lion football team also has added Ohio to a future schedule. The Nittany Lions will travel to Amherst, Mass., to meet the Minute- men during the 2021-22 basketball season, and Massachusetts will play in the Bryce Jordan Center during the 2022-23 campaign. On Nov. 11, 2023, the Minutemen will visit Beaver Sta- dium for the teams' second gridiron meeting. Penn State won the previous game, 48-7, in 2014. Penn State leads the men's basketball series with Massachusetts, 13-10. The teams' most recent meeting was dur- ing the 1990-91 season, Penn State's final campaign in the Atlantic 10, which ended with the Lions winning the A-10 tournament. The squads met twice every season from 1982-83 through 1990-91 and first met during the 1976-77 campaign. Penn State will host Ohio in Beaver Stadium on Sept.10, 2022, in the sev- enth meeting between the schools. The Nittany Lions lead the series, 5-1, but the Bobcats won the most recent contest, 24-14, putting a damper on Bill O'Brien's head coaching debut in the team's 2012 opener. With announcement of the games against Massachusetts and Ohio, Penn State's football schedules are complete through the 2023 season. The Nittany Lions will open the 2022 season with a Big Ten road game at Purdue (Sept. 3), followed by Ohio's visit to Beaver Sta- dium (Sept. 10), a trip to Auburn (Sept. N O T E B O O K PSU to face UMass in football, hoops

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