PENN STATE Turnovers major concern for coach
The Nittany Lions (2-1) have had 11 in two games, including six Saturday.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- It started with a fumble in the red zone. Then an interception over the middle. A fumbled snap under center. A second interception, this one off the receiver's chest. A fumbled handoff to the tailback. Another fumble on a center exchange.
By the time it was over, Penn State (2-1) had six turnovers -- all of them charged to quarterback Zack Mills -- and a whole lot of reasons for the Nittany Lions and coach Joe Paterno to be worried.
"That's 11 in two games. I'm really concerned about it," Paterno said after Saturday's 37-13 victory over Central Florida (0-3). "It think we need to do a much better job protecting the football, be careful with the passes we make, that kind of thing. I hope most of it's correctable, but we'll have to wait and see."
Mills has 10 of them
Actually, that was supposed to be corrected already. After a clean performance in the opener against Akron, Mills threw a personal-worst four interceptions in last week at Boston College. Those interceptions, and Paul Jefferson's fumble, contributed to the 21-7 loss.
While preparing for UCF -- a team that, despite its record, has caused far more turnovers (nine) than it has committed (three) -- Mills said he'd made it his personal responsibility to cut down on the turnovers.
"I'm very frustrated right now," Mills said after the UCF game. "We did win, and you've got to be happy about that. And as poorly as we played on offense, we still won pretty well, so that's a positive."
To be fair, one interception wasn't his fault; the ball bounced off Terrance Phillips' chest before being caught by Mike Walker and returned 59 yards. And it was unclear who was out of position on the handoff to Austin Scott.
"There was a little miscommunication," Scott said. "I didn't have the ball all the way in the pocket ready to go when Zack let the ball go, and it was right on the side of my hip, so it fell."
Fumbles disturbing
But Paterno called the two center-exchange fumbles "very disturbing."
"There's some things we may overlook as far as some other things, but we should never have it on the exchange," Paterno said. "It's very disturbing."
With all of those mistakes, how did Penn State pull it out? Aside from the interceptions, Mills did complete 19-of-29 for 229 yards, and Tony Hunt ran for three touchdowns and 125 yards.
More important, UCF was unable to convert on the turnovers. The Golden Knights stalled near midfield after the first fumble, and gained just 2 yards off the first interception. Walker's second interception set up a Matt Prater field goal at the end of the second quarter, but another Mills fumble led indirectly to Penn State's scoring a safety.
"It's what we didn't do," UCF coach George O'Leary said. "We're just a young football team with a lot of inexperienced players."
Penn State won't get that luxury again -- all four ranked teams Penn State plays are packed into the middle of the schedule. After opening Big Ten play next week at No. 20 Wisconsin next week, Penn State travels to No. 19 Minnesota. The Nittany Lions return home to face No. 15 Purdue and now-unranked Iowa before traveling to No. 7 Ohio State.