Blue White Illustrated

State College's coffee shops were packed last week. For as much of a dip in temperature as the weather brought, warming up with coffee, tea and hot chocolate for the holiday season was not the reason for the overcrowding. They weren't run- ning specials before the student popu- lation evacuated town with glee, either. No, it was finals week at Penn State. From the headphone-clad crammers to the small groups working on projects within the student population, seem- ingly everyone was stressing out. Con- sidering the possible payoff, the stress is worth every late night and extra ounce of studying. In nearly every case with every instructor, the final paper, test, project or presentation matters, as the pop quizzes, midterms and papers typically only make up a fraction of the cumulative that comes with finals. Knowing the stakes and the effort re- quired to be incredibly prepared, imagine entering the classroom, complete bal- anced breakfast consumed, sitting down with pencils sharpened and mind at the ready. Internal countdown clock reaches zero, but the weekly professor never ar- rives. Instead, a substitute waltzes in, grinning while passing out tests for the same subject, different class. Instead of calculus, the final requires intimate knowledge of multivariable advanced calc. Instead of Shakespeare's sonnets, the final asks for intense expli- cation of the Tragedies. No matter the earnestness with which the students prepared or the original professor taught, without some type of experience or memory bank to recall in the moment, that final would more or less amount to a guessing game. In essence, PSU's offensive linemen experienced the same sensation each and every week during the 2014 season. Battling some of the biggest, best de- fensive linemen in the country from week to week would have been tough enough. That those defensive linemen had coordinators fully aware of Penn State's situation who were all too happy to take advantage, well that was simply untenable. "I think every week we had a team do a little wrinkle that they hadn't shown on film," said redshirt junior An- gelo Mangiro. "I think it's because we were a younger offensive line, they were trying to trick us and deceive us, get us out of rhythm offensively." And why wouldn't they? Any opponent with any understand- ing of PSU's circumstances – battling through injuries to both starting tack- les, the absence of the senior-most lineman, the conversion of two defen- sive tackles in the off-season, and start- ing two redshirt freshmen – knew an easy key for success. The trick, quite simply, was to trick Penn State. FiCh-year senior linebacker Mike Hull, a veteran among many on the Lions' outstanding defense, should know. Asked hypothetically about the advantage of playing against inexperi- enced units, the Pittsburgh native in- stinctively perked up like a thief near an abandoned bank vault. "It's kind of that feeling that we can take advantage of lines like that with our scheme and with what we do defen- sively," Hull said. "It's a little bit of con- fusing them and then just beat them up front. But mainly, whenever you have an inexperienced group, we think we can confuse them with our scheme, and I think our talent level is pretty high, so it definitely helps." For any group littered with youth and inexperience, the same would be the case. Discussed at length, and yet still probably not enough, the unit's 20 re- turning starts heading into the season all belonged to Donovan Smith. Throw in the fact that, in 12 games, the group has featured five different sets of starters due to injury, with Mangiro, Andrew Nelson and Brian Gaia all starting in at least one different position through the course of the season and the unit became an in- credibly easy target to exploit. To the layperson, the differences weren't always simple to identify. How many of us can really identify the ten- dencies of the defensive fronts Penn State faced this past season, and in turn understand when subtle wrinkles were added? Regardless, every opponent, every week, in every game, put some- thing different on the field that it hadn't put on film to that point in the season. For offensive line coach Herb Hand, expecting the unexpected became the norm, but until the return of Miles Di- effenbach late in the year – a heady vet- eran with the memory bank to draw upon to identify and snuff out the unex- pected – adjusting in the moment was a near impossible task. The results suf- fered dramatically as the Nittany Lions struggled to get all 11 offensive players on the same page each snap – quarter- back, running backs, tight ends and wideouts all sharing in the culpability. But as Mangiro pointed out at Pin- stripe Bowl media day, the experience of having 12 finals, and facing 12 devious, scheming opponents, paid dividends by the end of the year for the offensive line. "I think toward the end of the season, that didn't happen so much because we've seen things," he said. "We'd be on the sideline, and it was like, 'We saw that week three or week four, so this is what we're going to do.' "Early on in the season, it was a little tougher doing that because we had so many guys that were inexperienced." Whether or not that will be enough to exhibit marked improvement by the time the Nittany Lions take on Boston College remains to be seen. Coming from a group that just landed five line- men on the Academic All-Big Ten list – four of whom will return in 2015 – the struggles of the year are unlikely to have been made in vain. "Things aren't always going to be pretty throughout a season," said Dief- fenbach. "One thing that has to stay constant is your hard work. You have to work hard and you have to work at it and things will come out on top. "It's very beneficial. You just kind of know where things are going, what's going on and what's happening." N A T E   B A U E R | N B A U E R @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M D E C E M B E R 2 3 , 2 0 1 4 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 10 For PSU's offensive line, 2014 is a teachable season

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