Blue White Illustrated

N O V E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 3 guard Connor McGovern also got hurt – and Indiana's defense attacking aggres- sively, Barkley had nowhere to run and oAen was being met in the backfield by multiple tacklers. He had 15 carries for 21 yards in the first half, and he only fared slightly better in the second, finishing with 58 yards on 33 carries (1.8 yards per carry). On the plus side, he also barreled into the end zone on two short touch- down runs. "They were blitzing almost every play, extending almost every play," Franklin said. "We didn't make plays on the perimeter early in the game. Either we could have thrown better balls or just did- n't make plays. In the second half, we were able to do that and it opened it up. They were putting the corners on an island and playing a high-risk, high-reward defense. With an inexperienced [offensive] line not playing the positions that they normally play, it was a good plan on their part. In the end, we found a way to get a win on the road. It's hard to do." • For much of the game, the Nittany Lions had difficulty getting third-down stops. Indiana had been converting 38.6 percent of its third downs going into the game, but it went 8 of 17 against Penn State, and several of those conversions came on third-and-long. • Indiana finished with 344 passing yards: 292 by Lagow and 52 by backup Zander Diamont, a dual-threat QB who caught the Lions flatfooted on a deep throw to Camion Patrick. THE TAKEAWAY The Lions' charmed season continues. At 8-2 overall and 6-1 in the Big Ten, they figure to hold onto their top-10 ranking in the College Football Playoff poll, and they remain in contention for a major bowl invitation. Next week, they will face Rutgers, which suffered a dismal 49-0 loss at Michigan State on Saturday. Both the Scarlet Knights and Spartans had been winless in the Big Ten going into the game, but the hosts held Rutgers to 149 total yards and plunged it to its seventh conference loss. With the Knights struggling, Penn State will be heavily favored in its road finale. But how it fares will depend in part on how healthy it is going into the game. The Lions have now lost three offensive tack- les to injury this season: Andrew Nelson, Brendan Mahon and Paris Palmer. Nelson is done for the year. The status of Mahon and Palmer is unknown. The coaching staff clearly doesn't want to burn fresh- man Will Fries' redshirt this late in the season, or it would have done so when faced with an emergency at Indiana. Franklin and his staff have a lot of work ahead of them this week as they piece things back together. But that didn't di- minish their excitement aAer Penn State won its sixth game in a row. As Franklin pointed out in the postgame news con- ference, it's the Lions' first six-game Big Ten win streak since 1994. "There has been a lot of good of football played here," he said, "so I'm proud of that."

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