Blue White Illustrated

receiver that Moorhead's o:ense will need in order to maximize its potential. At his weekly practice updates in late March and early April, Franklin fre- quently praised the performances of those two players. Givens turned in a strong showing in the Blue-White Game, leading all tack- lers with six stops, including 3.5 tackles for loss and two sacks. Franklin appeared to be quite pleased with his e:ort, just as he had been throughout spring drills. "Kevin Givens is a guy who really showed up and made a bunch of plays in the backfield," Franklin said. "I think we really found out some things [about him]. We thought he could do it, but you never really know. He actually was probably one of the big surprises and one of our stars of the spring. [He] did it in the weight room. You have guys who do that, but it doesn't always translate to the field. He was able to translate it." A;er watching (and rewatching) Givens' performance in the Blue-White Game, not only did I come to the con- clusion that he deserves to be my break- out player on defense for the upcoming season, I also wondered if he were a car- bon copy of Zettel. There was a great deal of skepticism about whether the undersized Zettel could 9ll Jones' shoes. Many felt his play would fade in late October and Novem- ber as the team's Big Ten schedule took its toll. We all know how that turned out. So is it fair to even dream, if you are a Penn State football fan, that Givens will be able to 9ll the role that Zettel held during his junior season two years ago? Maybe so. But while Zettel makes for an easy reference point, in my opinion, Givens is even more reminiscent of an earlier Penn State defensive lineman: Jordan Hill. While there are some similarities be- tween Givens and Zettel, there are also some signi9cant di:erences, the most notable being the 3-inch disparity in their heights. But with Hill, the physical attributes are very comparable, as are some of the biographical details. As a junior at Steelton-Highspire High in Steelton, Pa., Hill was a 6-1, 245- pound linebacker who doubled as a full- back on o:ense. Givens, meanwhile, was a 6-1, 230-pound two-way player at Al- toona (Pa.) High. Like Hill, he was a full- back, but he was even better on defense, manning a hybrid defensive end/outside linebacker position. Both Hill and Givens ended up being recruited as de- fensive ends. "As you all know, we were bragging about [Givens] all spring," Franklin said. "[He's] a young man out of Altoona, Pa., a high school running back who is play- ing defensive tackle for us right now and is very, very athletic." Hill and Givens share a few other simi- larities. For example, both received only middling evaluations from the recruit- ing media and both made late commit- ments to Penn State. Hill gave the Nittany Lions a verbal commitment while they were in Cali- fornia getting ready to play Southern Cal in the 2009 Rose Bowl. Penn State hadn't even been recruiting him until December 2008, and he initially had committed to Rutgers before switching to the Lions. Penn State didn't make a strong push for Givens until mid-December 2014, getting involved a;er Pitt lost head coach Paul Chryst to Wisconsin. Givens had verbally committed to the Panthers in August before the start of the 2014 season, but a;er Chryst's exit, Nittany Lion defensive line coach Sean Spencer stopped by Altoona High School to urge Givens to keep his options open. "And I told him I would," Givens said. Penn State o:ered him a scholarship shortly before signing day for the Class of 2015, and Givens jumped immediately to the Nittany Lions. It's now been 15 months since he signed with Penn State,

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