Blue White Illustrated

with his team's showing. He was so hap- py, in fact, that he dropped a quote from the 1998 comedy "The Waterboy" in the post-tournament news conference. Of course the NCAA Wrestling Cham- pionships are my obvious answer, so here's an o<-the-path honorable mention that may well pay future dividends: Penn State baseball racked up two triple plays in one game May 16 vs. Michigan State. It was only the third time in college or pro- fessional baseball history that a team has accomplished such a feat, and it made the "SportsCenter" list of top 10 plays that night. Said head coach Rob Cooper, "Any- time that many people are touched by it, especially high school-aged kids who we'll be looking at in the future, I think it's a powerful thing for our program." MOMENT TO FORGET Penn State bas- ketball overtook Rec Hall in a return to its old stomping grounds Dec. 14 for an out-of-conference matchup vs. Prince- ton. On the surface, it seemed like a great idea. And when more than 6,100 fans showed up, it seemed even better. Then PSU wound up squandering a 20- point second-half lead and went on to lose in overtime, 81-79. What was sup- posed to be a fun novelty quickly mor- phed into sour defeat, complete with a hangover that extended well into the Big Ten season, as PSU went on to lose seven of its next eight games. ■ LOU PRATO CONTRIBUTING WRITER MOMENT TO REMEMBER Football has been the king on campus for most of Penn State's existence, but it wasn't football that gave the school one of its crowning achievements on Oct. 11, 2013. On this Friday night of the annual Homecoming weekend, a raucous standing-room crowd of 6,370 saw Penn State's one-year-old Division I ice hockey team play its ;rst game in the new Pegula Ice Arena. This was the climax of more than 100 years of work by students, coaches and administrators to make ice hockey a ma- jor intercollegiate sport. The electrifying atmosphere inside the arena that night rivaled any previous indoor sports event ever at the Armory, Rec Hall or the Bryce Jordan Center. The crazy enthusiasm of the students had something to do with it. They stood throughout the night in their special section at the south end of the arena, screaming and yelling as they harassed and tried to intimidate the vis- iting team from the U.S. Military Acade- my. No one was prouder that night than alumnus Terry Pegula, whose $100 mil- lion gi= provided the ;nances for the men's and women's varsity programs and the construction of the arena, and Joe Battista, the former player and coach of Penn State's club hockey team, who dedicated much of his adult life to bringing Division I hockey to Penn State. The excitement was not limited to the game itself, as the fans congregated in the hallways and restaurants beforehand and during the two intermissions to rave about the new ice palace. Down on the ice, the Nittany Lion team made the night complete with a 4-1 victory over the Cadets. At the time, I wondered if the fervor of the crowd and exhilarating atmosphere was an aberration. However, as the weeks went by, the passion of the hockey partisans hardly diminished. Ice hockey had come of age at Penn State. MOMENT TO FORGET The football version of a mugging by Ohio State at the Horseshoe the night of Oct. 26 will never be forgotten. However, it was equally disappointing to see the Penn State men's basketball team blow a 20- point lead over Princeton with 10 min- utes remaining in the hyped "Return to Rec" game on Dec. 14. For a while, it was like old times in the bandbox of Rec Hall. In the end, the 81-79 overtime loss was another setback for the school's ever- struggling basketball program. ■ RYAN SNYDER RECRUITING REPORTER MOMENT TO REMEMBER Maybe it's just me, but this is an easy one. In roughly 50 seconds, Christian Hacken- berg went from star of the future to star of the present, leading Penn State on an 80-yard drive with less than a minute to play against Michigan. Allen Robinson's catch at the 1-yard line with 30 seconds to go will always be the highlight that sticks with Nittany Lion fans, but to me, it was the compo- sure that Hackenberg showed in those couple of plays that basically summed up and validated his entire recruitment, which I followed closely. There have been plenty of other mem- orable games in Penn State's long foot- ball history and there are no doubt more to come. But to me, this past year was all about those 50 seconds. Even if the Lions had lost the game in overtime, their rally at the end of regulation would have stood on its own as a testament to Hacken- berg's vast potential. To say that the fu- ture is bright, well, that would be an un- derstatement. MOMENT TO FORGET Penn State's dismal loss to Ohio State at the Horse- shoe is an easy pick, but the game against Indiana stood out to me even more. A=er getting o< to a tough start, the Lions were able to recapture the mo- mentum early in the third quarter when Hackenberg hit Robinson for a 26-yard touchdown. What followed was a complete col- lapse, as Penn State allowed 21 unan- swered points in the fourth quarter, showing a lack of leadership and a re- liance on youth that at times througout the season proved costly. Indiana went on to defeat Penn State for the ;rst time, ending a 16-game losing streak with a 44-24 romp. Bill O'Brien may turn out to be every bit the coach that NFL experts believe him to be, but he and his sta< had enough talent at their disposal to beat Indiana that day. I felt as though every- one gave up in the fourth quarter. To me, the Lions' lack of e

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