Penn State kicker still looks for game winner

Senior Kevin Kelly hasn’t had one since his freshman season and that came after two misses.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — For more than the last year and a half, it seemed that every time Kevin Kelly made a kick, he was breaking some sort of record.

First there were the Penn State records. Then the Nittany Lions kicker was making Big Ten history. And now he is about a long-distance field goal away from eclipsing the NCAA mark for career points by a kicker.

However, despite all the accomplishments and the year-by-year improvement, Kelly is still missing a signature game-winning field goal. Sure, there was the 29-yard overtime clincher he converted as a freshman in the Orange Bowl. But that was a dubious success since it came on the heels of two misses from chip-shot distance.

Three years later, the senior has yet to have another opportunity to win a game with a three-pointer. With two regular-season games and a bowl game left, however, Kelly still has time to show he wouldn’t need a do-over to do so.

“It’s pretty much how the game goes,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Take the Iowa game — please. On Saturday, the Hawkeyes, faced with a possible game-winning 31-yard field goal, went with backup Daniel Murray, a sophomore who hadn’t attempted a field goal in two months. As freshman starter Trent Mossbrucker sulked on the sidelines, Murray seized the moment and is now forever etched in the Iowa annals.

Murray “only did long-range kicks,” Kelly said. “I’m sure he would have never expected to be hitting a 31-yarder. The opportunities come very strangely. You just have to make the most of them.”

Kelly won’t likely have his chance Saturday against Indiana, a 35-point underdog. But the following week, 9-2 Michigan State comes to Beaver Stadium with a Rose Bowl berth potentially on the line. And then there’s a bowl game, which could bring the 5-foot-7, 164-pound kicker full circle.

Fresh out of Neshaminy High, Kelly became the first freshman since Craig Fayak to win the starting job at Penn State. He broke all of Fayak’s first-year records and entered the Orange Bowl with a season full of confidence. But faced with two opportunities to win the game — once in regulation time and another in the first overtime — the left-footed Kelly was wide left from 29 and 38 yards.

He made good in the third overtime, though, when the Lions called off a fake. Still, Kelly occasionally watches tape of the game as motivation.

“I pretty much watch everything except the last kick I made,” Kelly said.

Despite an injury-marred sophomore season, Kelly has steadily improved each year. Last year, he upped his field-goal accuracy and kickoff yardage, and passed Fayak in career points and field goals. This season, he has made 17 of 20 field-goal attempts, with two coming from 50 and 53 yards.

“He’s a fine kicker, and I think he’s feeling really good about himself,” coach Joe Paterno said last month.

Kelly, a semifinalist for the Lou Groza Award, given to the nation’s best kicker, recently surpassed the Big Ten marks of 72 field goals and 373 career points. He has 75 field goals and 402 points.

He is ranked fourth in NCAA history for career points by a kicker and would move into first place, past Louisville’s Art Carmody, with 32 more.

“These records are kind of sneaking up on me,” said Kelly, who arrived in State College with more modest goals. “All I wanted was to get in the game and kick some field goals.”

The crossbar has been raised, and the NFL beckons.

“I would love to do that,” Kelly said. “It’s probably the best job anybody could have.”