Blue White Illustrated

Before he arrived at Penn State, Jordan Lucas spent a year at Worchester Acad- emy in Massachusetts. The New England Prep School Athletic Conference might not bear much resemblance to the Big Ten, but when Lucas got to University Park in 2012, the Nittany Lions' second- ary coach at the time, John Butler, would frequently remind him that he wasn't just another wide-eyed freshman. "You're not a young guy coming in here," Butler would tell him. "You can't have that mindset. You have to think like a veteran." Butler's stance may have made sense from a coaching perspective. The Nit- tany Lions, after all, needed immediate help on defense following the mass exo- dus of the previous year's secondary and the imposition of major NCAA sanctions that summer. But it didn't resonate with Lucas. "What freshman comes in here and automatically thinks like that? That just doesn't happen," he said. Lucas ended up contributing at safety that fall, and after switching to corner- back last spring, he quickly developed into a starter. But the transition into a team leader? That's only now starting to take place. "I wasn't a leader last year," Lucas said. "I didn't really have a voice. I didn't know how to lead. This year, I'm playing a leadership role. Trying to lead by exam- ple and be vocal out there, just so that the guys know that we're not running this defense without any leaders. Our guys are going to be vocal – me, Mike Hull, Adrian [Amos], C.J. [Olaniyan], [Ryan] Keiser. We're going to be vocal and let them know that we have their back and we're going to work just as hard as they should." If the defense has been coming to- gether more quickly than the offense this spring – "Our starting defensive unit, we feel really good about," James Franklin said on March 29 – Lucas is surely one of the reasons why. He started all 12 games as a sophomore, finishing third on the team with 55 tackles and tying for the team lead with three interceptions. Lucas said he's been working this spring on "ball skills, ball disruption." Last year, he broke up a team-high 13 passes, so he's already well on his way to becoming one of the Big Ten's more dis- ruptive cornerbacks. That impressive debut at cornerback last season gives Lucas plenty of credi- bility as he looks to assert himself as a leader. But he's not willing to simply let his statistics speak for themselves. One of the team's more outgoing players, he wants to practice a vocal brand of lead- ership that will dovetail with his on-field performance to ensure that he has every- one's attention. "I think that'll fire some guys up," he said. "Some people don't get the lead- by-example thing. It takes a voice some- times. When you hear somebody's voice and they're telling you something, and then they go out there and show you, that can do a lot." A P R I L 9 , 2 0 1 4 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 6 M AT T   H E R B | M A T T @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M ON-THE-JOB TRAINING Now an experienced defensive back for Penn State, Jordan Lucas finds his voice this spring Steve Manuel

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