Blue White Illustrated

September 2017

Penn State Sports Magazine

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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> onships, Ohio State 35. No other team has won more than 18. And if geography is an additional constraint, Penn State has to go in the East, exacerbating the imbal- ance. Adding to the degree of difficulty is that other East teams have flashed their po- tential in recent years. There's Michigan State, obviously, which is only two years removed from a Big Ten championship and College Football Playoff appearance. And there's also Maryland. The Terrapins haven't yet enjoyed an on-field break- through, but they are spending $155 mil- lion to turn Cole Field House into a state-of-the-art training center, and they've parlayed their facilities invest- ments, as well as their proximity to some of the best high school football programs in the mid-Atlantic, into a series of re- cruiting successes. This year's class was rated 17th in the country by Rivals.com, and their upcoming class was 20th as of early August. "I think we're recruiting at a level that will put us in the position we want to be in," second-year coach D.J. Durkin said. "We're here to win championships. That's why we're here, that's what we're going to do. "I think we took a great first step with that recruiting class we just put together. And we have some guys on our team, on 1 TYQUAN LEWIS DE OHIO STATE Last season's Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year, the 6-foot-4, 265- pound Lewis is a matchup nightmare for the rest of the con- ference. He led the Buckeyes in sacks both as a sophomore and junior, er passing up an opportunity to enter the NFL Dra> following a junior season in which he led the Nittany Lions and was third in the Big Ten with 110 tackles. Allen also had six tackles for loss and two fumble re- coveries, not to men- tion a blocked kick that will be remem- bered in University Park for a long, long time to come. ■ B I G T E N ' S B E S T B Y M A T T H E R B DEFENSIVE PLAYERS MARCUS ALLEN Steve Manuel

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