Blue White Illustrated

W R A P Springing forward he most memorable moment of this year's Blue-White Game? That's easy: Nick Scott's 51-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. It probably should have been a 3- or 4- yard loss, but the freshman running back spun away from Anthony Zettel in the back.eld and somehow managed to keep his balance. A1er turning up.eld, he outsprinted Trevor Williams into the end zone to give the White team its only points of the a1ernoon. Scott's run was exactly the sort of "chunk" play that Penn State wasn't able to produce with any regularity last season, and it came at the expense of the .rst-team defense, which proved itself last year to be quite e0ective against the run. But as to the crucial matter of whether it o0ered a glimpse of things to come, well, that's an open question, and it's going to remain open for the next four months. As members of the Blue defense told Scott before retreating to the sideline, "You got lucky. It was a /uke play." When you get right down to it, that's a pretty good summation of the entire Blue-White experience. Determining whether you've witnessed something that matters is the central conundrum of the spring game. Over the years, Penn State fans have seen breakout perform- ances that foreshadowed great careers, as when a young defensive end named Tyoka Jackson took over the 1991 game. But they've also seen a string of per- formances by players like Titcus Petti- grew, Bobby Samuels and, most recently, Cole Chiappialle, that didn't carry over into the regular season. Back when Joe Paterno was still in charge of Blue-White Saturday, he used to do his "postgame" presser an hour or two before kicko0. It was a way to make the day go a little quicker but also a tacit acknowledgement that whatever hap- pened on that .eld wasn't going to have much of a bearing on how the coaching The game may have been a mixed bag, but PSU continues to make progress T

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