Blue White Illustrated

N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 13 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 EVANSTON, Ill. - James Franklin warned his Nittany Lions all week about the dangers of slow starts. The message didn't stick. Playing its 10th game in 10 weeks, the Penn State football team traveled west for an 11 a.m. start and needed every bit of the hour delay before starting to find real success on either side of the ball against the Wildcats. Offensively, the Nittany Lions were flat from the onset, picking up a single first down while producing just 22 yards in their first 17 plays of the game. Chal- lenged by a Northwestern defensive front that put consistent pressure on quarter- back Christian Hackenberg, offensive lineman Brendan Mahon lamented the offense's inability to break out of its slow start. "It was definitely not as fast as we like, and you'd like to have a couple touch- downs in the first quarter and get the ball rolling," he said. "That's when you have to take the mojo from the defense and be a team and take what they're giving you and run with it." The issue, of course, was that the de- fense wasn't especially compelling, ei- ther. With the Nittany Lions struggling to contain Northwestern running back Justin Jackson on the ground, backup quarterback Zack Oliver added to their defensive travails by completing a 14- yard touchdown pass early in the second quarter. Tacking on a 1-yard touchdown carry later in the half, the Wildcats found themselves ahead 13-0. "I think we were undermanned at cer- tain points on certain sides of the field," linebacker Jason Cabinda said. "In that first half, we've just got to do better. Everyone wants to say stuff about the coaches, all that stuff, but at the end of the day they're not on the field. They don't execute game plans. They call plays, we're out there to execute it." The Nittany Lions finally regained their offensive mojo in the second quarter when they put together a nine- play, 78-yard scoring drive capped by Saquon Barkley's 7-yard touchdown carry out of the wildcat. But it seemed only fitting that, after starting out slowly on both sides of the ball, Penn State's special teams would get in on the act, allowing Solomon Vault to re- turn the ensuing kickoff 96 yards for a touchdown. Penn State overcame its poor start in the second half, outscoring the Wildcats 14-3. With two weeks to prepare for Michigan, Hackenberg said the Nittany Lions would go back to the drawing board to find a solution to their early- game woes. "It was tough. We weren't really click- ing, we weren't able to get things going. Being able to bounce back in the second half and do what we did was good, being able to climb out of the hole and get in a situation where at the end of the day, we could have won the game. We'll get bet- ter at that," Hackenberg said. "We've had games where we came out hot and fin- ished weak. We've had games where we came out slow and finished really strong. We'll figure out a formula to get it done." LATE ARRIVAL Sluggish performance in first half proves costly in Nittany Lions' defeat NO ESCAPE Hackenberg was under constant pressure from Northwestern's defensive front. Photo by Steve Manuel

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