Blue White Illustrated

BEST OF THE BEST Wright won his second national title (and clinched Penn State's team championship) at the NCAA tournament. Jesse James (opposite page) had a critical touchdown in Penn State's victory over Wisconsin. move – Sanderson was one of the sport's most recognizable figures – but Penn State hadn't won a national title since 1953, and the best-case scenarios that were being floated at the time of his appointment were the kind that rarely come true. And yet the best-case scenario is pretty much what Penn State has gotten since Sanderson came to town. The Nittany Lions clinched their third national championship in a row when Quentin Wright defeated Kent State's top-ranked Dustin Kilgore, 86, in the final at 197 pounds. The Nittany Lions didn't claim the championship as decisively as they did a year earlier, nor did they return home from Des Moines, Iowa, with everything they wanted. Three of their five finalists lost, and Sanderson looked inconsolable when David Taylor fell to Cornell's Kyle Dake, 54, in the final at 165, slumping to the floor of a tunnel in Wells Fargo Arena with his head bowed in anguish. But Penn State is on a spectacular roll, and there are no indications that it's going to end anytime soon. This was the sort of moment we weren't supposed to be seeing in Beaver Stadium anymore. Not until 2018, anyway. But after allowing Leaders Division champ Wisconsin to roll up 127 yards and score 14 points on its first two possessions, Penn State's defense stiffened and what seemed at first like a potential rout turned into a back-and-forth game. It went to overtime, and that's when Sam Ficken, the sophomore kicker who bounced back nicely from a case

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