Blue White Illustrated

DAVID GOODWIN ICE HOCKEY Goodwin, a forward from Des Peres, Mo., came to Penn State a/er a season with the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders of the United States Hockey League. He .nished as Penn State's second- leading scorer, amassing seven goals and 11 as- sists in 34 games. EUGENE LEWIS FOOTBALL The wide receiver from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., turned heads on the scout team in 2012, raising expectations for his .rst sea- son of active duty. He certainly delivered on that promise, starting four games and es- tablishing himself as a high-impact wideout with 18 catches for 234 yards and three touch- downs. Two of those TDs were in Penn State's .nale against Wisconsin, and that game raised expectations yet again – this time for a breakout sophomore season. CONNOR MALONEY SOCCER Maloney started all 21 of Penn State's games during his debut season. The true freshman forward from Harrisburg, Pa., .n- ished with a team-high seven assists, and he added a pair of goals, including the only goal in Penn State's 1-0 victory over host UC Santa Bar- bara in the second round of the NCAA tourna- ment. ZAIN RETHERFORD WRESTLING The newcomer from Benton, Pa., went 33-3 in his debut season. He was the runner-up at Big Tens at 141 pounds and went on to .nish ./h at nationals, helping Penn State claim its fourth consecutive NCAA championship. His 33 victo- ries are the seventh-most by a freshman in Nit- tany Lion history. MIKE SUTTON LACROSSE Sutton, a mid.elder from Sewell, N.J., scored 13 goals in only six games. He led Penn State with an average of 3.0 goals per game during the Colonial Athletic Association season, winning the league's Rookie of the Week honor three times. – M.H. HONOR ROLL ames Franklin is an irrepressible guy when he's got a microphone in front of him and a topic that he can warm up to, and he had both during a Coaches Caravan stop in Hershey last month. The topic was Christian Hack- enberg. Specifically, it was the leadership potential that the sophomore quarterback has exhibited during the past few months. This is the kind of bright, buoyant subject matter that brings out the showman in Franklin, the kind that gives him an op- portunity to gush about the strengths of the program he's trying to revive. And gush he did. Boy, did he gush. "I don't like to stand too close to him when the media's at practice because he's beautiful," Franklin said. "Just standing next to him, I mean, it's like the alpha male. You feel ugly every time you stand next to the guy. "But he's so charismatic and smart. He's caring about people. He's thoughtful and intelligent. So he has that natural [lead- ership] ability." Franklin may have been playing to the crowd just a bit, but the hyperbole had a rock-solid foundation: Hackenberg is an impressive guy, and he's been wowing people at Penn State from the moment he set foot on campus last summer. Just how impressive has the rising soph- omore quarterback been? In some ways, that question has an easily quantifiable answer. The former Rivals five-star prospect from Palmyra, Va., won the starting po- sition in his first preseason camp and went on to complete 58.9 percent of his passes for 2,955 yards. He threw 20 touch- down passes, only 10 interceptions and orchestrated one of the most remarkable comebacks in Penn State history, leading a 23-second touchdown drive against Michigan that sent the game to overtime and set the stage for a 43-40 victory. He finished the season with his best game, a 339-yard, four-touchdown performance in Penn State's 31-24 upset victory at Wisconsin. Shortly afterward, he was named the Big Ten's Freshman of the Year. But there's a more abstract dimension to Hackenberg's story, and it's inter- twined with the broader story of Penn State's embattled football program. By holding firm to his verbal commitment even after the NCAA hit the program with unprecedented sanctions, Hack- enberg showed that the university was still the kind of place where elite prospects could thrive. He helped Penn State weather some of its darkest mo- ments, and when the clouds started to lift last September with the NCAA's de- cision to reduce its scholarship penalties, it became possible to imagine a future in which the Nittany Lions will be able to reclaim their place among the nation's best football teams. Hackenberg will have a significant hand in whether the trend line continues up- ward. He's the Nittany Lions' most for- midable asset heading into what could be the most challenging of the sanction years. The veteran leadership that lifted Penn State to 15 victories the past two seasons is largely gone, and the four- star reinforcements that Franklin has been recruiting since his arrival in Jan- uary are only now starting to arrive on campus. Many of the most promising players Franklin has recruited thus far won't get to University Park until 2015. If the Lions are to keep building buzz, they'll need to win a few games in the interim. And to do that, Hackenberg will have to master his second playbook in the past year. Which, by all accounts, he is well on his way to doing. "It is a bit different," he conceded this spring. "But a lot of things translate J QB looks ahead after a dazzling debut | CHRISTIAN HACKENBERG THE YEAR IN REVIEW M A L E F R E S H M A N O F T H E Y E A R ON THE MOVE Hacken- berg impressed the Lions' new coaching staff this spring. Steve Manuel

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