MORGANTOWN, WV — So many football games turn on what happens just before and just after halftime.
Penn State’s going-away 34-12 victory over West Virginia on Saturday, Aug. 31, in stormy Morgantown was a perfect example of this.
The Mountaineers came into this season opener for both teams hyped and ready to use a full year of preparation for the visit by the Nittany Lions.
It all seemed to be working out for WVU when a field goal crept the Mountaineers to within 13-6 of Penn State with 37 seconds left in the first half.
The locker room talk for them would have been simple. Come out firing. Get a stop. Tie the game.
Penn State, however, wasn’t ready to talk yet at halftime. There were, after all, 37 seconds left to play.
Starting at its own 27 after WVU’s kickoff, Penn State began with a Nicholas Singleton run followed by a 55-yard rainbow completion from quarterback Drew Allar to Omari Evans to the West Virginia 22-yard line with 10 seconds left on the clock.
After a time out and on the next play, Allar hit Harrison Wallace with a perfect pass in the corner of the endzone for a touchdown and a 20-6 Nittany Lion lead at halftime.
Penn State next received the third-quarter kickoff, and on the ninth play of the ensuing drive, Singleton broke free over the right side of the line and ran untouched for a 40-yard touchdown and a now comfortable 27-6 Penn State lead.
West Virginia did score again, getting to within 27-12, but that was all the Mountaineers would get.
Penn State finished the scoring on a 19-yard pass play from Beau Pribula to tight end Tyler Warren with nine minutes to play, but it was those 14 points the Nittany Lions put up in the five minutes of game time sandwiching halftime that suddenly turned the game in their favor.
Of course, in real time, Penn State had to wait over two hours between those big scores as there was a long weather delay due to lightning and a bad rainstorm around halftime.
In all, Penn State outgained West Virginia 457 to 246 with a balanced attack of 235 passing yards and 222 rushing. The Lion defense also held WVU to just 85 yards rushing and one touchdown.
“I thought they (West Virginia) battled us very tough, especially early on,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said, “but we were able to do some pretty good things as the game went on.
“It was great to see Trey (Harrison Wallace III), a guy we’ve been talking about for a while, have a big game.
“We’re going to watch this tape. There’s going to be a ton of stuff that we didn’t like and that we need to get cleaned up, but we were able to come on the road in a very tough environment and get a win against a team that I think is really under-ranked.”
The Nittany Lions will now return home for their next four games, beginning this Saturday, Sept. 7, with another non-conference matchup against the MAC’s Bowling Green Falcons.
Bowling Green, 7-6 in 2023, started its 2024 season with a resounding crash when the Falcons’ Justin Pegues returned the opening kickoff against Fordham 100 yards for a touchdown.
Then, before the first quarter ended, BG scored another two touchdowns and was comfortably ahead 21-0.
Another touchdown just into the second quarter made it 27-0, and Bowling Green was on its way to a 41-17 win.
Running back Terion Stewart ran for 161 yards on the day and three touchdowns, including a 73-yarder in the fourth quarter.
Fordham did gain some yards against the BG defense — 219 through the air and 182 rushing — but the disastrous first quarter was too much to overcome.
Bowling Green returned 15 starters from that 2023 team, including eight on offense. The offense averaged 326 yards and 26 points per game, and with eight starters back, including veteran quarterback Connor Bazelak, those numbers can improve this season.
Against Fordham, Bazelak was 15-for-22 for 168 yards, while junior Stewart, 5-foot-9, 220 pounds, ran 14 times for 161 yards and three touchdowns.
The leading receiver was Harald Fannin Jr. with six catches for 67 yards with a long of 21 yards.
With the number of returnees, plus some defensive transfers, Bowling Green will again be a MAC contender and vie to return to another bowl game.
Penn State will no doubt be favored in this game, but it seems clear that the Lions can’t let BG get off to the kind of start they put on Fordham.
And this is the kind of game that coach Franklin zeroes in on when he says, “We just want to be 1-0 this week.”
Kickoff is set for noon at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 7.
Bowling Green (1-0) at No. 8 Penn State (1-0)
Saturday, Sept. 7, noon
Beaver Stadium, University Park
