Sunday, October 05, 2003

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- It was almost as if the Penn State offense had passed through some kind of time warp and it was Kerry Collins leading the Lions down the field on this miserable fall afternoon with passes to Kyle Brady, Ki-Jana Carter and Bobby Engram.

The stats were electrifying, the very stuff of Collins and Carter:

Three plays, 80 yards, 33 seconds and a touchdown.

Four plays, 70 yards, 50 seconds and a touchdown.

Those are numbers out of 1994, when the Lions were unbeaten with one of the greatest offenses in the history of college football. But this was 2003, and only for those fleeting moments yesterday did the Lions have the look of a champion. For much of the remainder of the game, it was the Penn State team that rarely has failed to disappoint, and it was that way again on the grass of Beaver Stadium as the Lions fell to 2-4 with a 30-23 loss to Wisconsin.

But there was a sliver of hope to come out of this game, a reason to believe the losses can end and the Lions can regroup -- if not this year then next.

This was the coming out -- and possibly the coming of age -- for redshirt sophomore quarterback Michael Robinson, who had become known as an “athletic” quarterback, which is to say he can hurt you with his feet but not with his arm.

Not anymore. Against a Wisconsin line the Lions couldn’t budge, Robinson threw 43 times and completed 22 for 379 yards and two touchdowns. He did not throw an interception.

“You guys are the ones who said I’m a running quarterback,” Robinson told a media throng. “I always knew I could throw the ball.”

It was an uneven performance, for sure, with long periods of ineffectiveness. But this was Robinson’s first college start, and he was throwing against a team that knew the pass was coming. There were bound to be imperfections.

But those two drives tended to erase the bad moments.

Trailing, 23-9, late in the third quarter and with Penn State seemingly out of the game, Robinson energized his teammates and a Beaver Stadium crowd of 107,851 that long ago had fallen silent.

On a first-and-15 from his 27, on the third play of the drive, Robinson hit fifth-year tight end Matt Kranchick in stride at the 50. Kranchick, 6 feet 8, made like a wide receiver and sprinted for the end zone, separating himself from the Wisconsin defenders.

The score failed to inspire Penn State’s defense, which was pushed around much of the game, although the Badgers were down to their third-string tailback. The Nittany Lions yielded a 13-play, 80-yard drive as Booker Stanley, who ran for 119 yards in the second half, rushed for large chunks of yards.

But Robinson and the Lions came right back.

On four consecutive plays, Robinson threw 5 yards to Kranchick, 33 to Gerald Smith, 12 to Tony Johnson and 5 to Smith for a touchdown.

This score seemed to invigorate the defense. It got the ball back in four plays, and Robinson seemed poised to mount a tying score. He passed 14 yards to Maurice Humphrey and 27 to Kranchick. But there the magic ended. His next six passes were incomplete.

Robinson was filling in for Zack Mills, who was injured early in the loss to Minnesota last week. Mills is expected to return next week, when the Lions play at Purdue, and coach Joe Paterno said he simply doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened today,” said a downbeat Paterno, who seemed worn down by yet another tough loss. “It’s hard when you have a bunch of kids who work as hard as these kids do and we can’t help them win a game.

“We’ll take a good look at what we’re doing and make a decision.”

When Paterno makes that decision, he’ll remember the two spectacular drives, but he’ll also remember the six consecutive incompletions Robinson threw to start the second half as well as the six late in the game.

It’s a decision of major Importance. After Purdue, the Lions play at Iowa. Road games against top 25 teams are not a tonic for what ails a downtrodden program. The Lions are looking at two probable losses, followed by a home game against national champion Ohio State. A 2-4 record could be 2-7 in three weeks.

This is a team that needs a full-time quarterback. Paterno needs to pick Mills or Robinson but not both.

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