Penguins try to snap 3-game losing skid

STAFF/WIRE REPORTS

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State football team and 12 seniors will play their final home game of the season today, when the Penguins play host to Illinois State at 1 p.m.

The Penguins (4-5, 2-4 Missouri Valley Conference) have lost three straight games, including a 28-7 defeat at No. 11 Northern Iowa last Saturday.

Illinois State is 5-4, 4-2, and coming off a 25-7 win over Western Illinois.

The series is tied 9-9, but the Salukis have won the last three meetings, including a 54-44 win in Normal, Ill., last season.

Ohio State-Iowa

COLUMBUS — All the talk about how lucky Iowa was to win its first nine games brought back memories for Ohio State coach Jim Tressel.

His 2002 team was subjected to the same putdowns. Some even called that squad, which won seven games by seven or fewer points, the Luckeyes.

And all it did was win the national championship.

“I kind of enjoyed the discussion there about how they were comparing them to the 2002 Buckeyes,” Tressel said. “To me that was a compliment. They were talking about a team that figured out how you win — and they know how to win.”

Now 15th-ranked Iowa (9-1, 5-1) and No. 10 Ohio State (8-2, 5-1) square off today before 105,000 on senior day at Ohio Stadium with the winner guaranteed a spot in the Rose Bowl. No matter what happens a week later in the regular-season finales, the winner would still win all Big Ten tiebreakers.

In addition, the winner also will grab at least a share of the conference title. For Ohio State, that would be a fifth championship in a row, while for the Hawkeyes it would be their first title since 2004. Another win a week later at home against Minnesota could give them their first outright Big Ten crown in 24 years.

“Being on the road with these kinds of implications on this game, yeah it’s about as big as it can get,” said Iowa offensive lineman Bryan Bulaga.

Penn State-Indiana

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State’s recruiting class of 2005 is hailed in Happy Valley as a group of players who helped bring the storied program back from football purgatory to national relevance.

So don’t be surprised if the biggest cheers for the No. 19 Nittany Lions’ final home game of the season are reserved for linebacker Sean Lee.

The last player on the roster who played in the Orange Bowl that capped the school’s magical ’05 ride will run out of the Beaver Stadium tunnel for the last time before the Nittany Lions (8-2, 4-2 Big Ten) play host to Indiana (4-6, 1-5).

“It’s definitely going to be emotional. So much time playing in front of our fans,” said Lee, a fifth-year senior. “It’s definitely going to be tough for me and a lot of the older guys.”

Quarterback Daryll Clark was recruited in 2004, but spent a year in prep school and didn’t start his Penn State career until 2006.

Notre Dame-Pitt

PITTSBURGH — If Dave Wannstedt and Charlie Weis feel like they’ve been here before, it’s because they have.

Remarkably, the story lines for tonight’s game are nearly identical to 2005, when Weis and Wannstedt opened their college head coaching careers together in Pittsburgh.

Like then, No. 8 Pitt (8-1) is the on-the-rise program positioned for its best season in years. Notre Dame (6-3) is unranked and an underdog, a team seemingly not yet ready to win big games for a coach who has yet to prove himself on the college level.

Deja vu, indeed.

“We thought we were a heck of a lot better than we really were,” Wannstedt said, reflecting on that 42-21 loss to the Irish four years ago that sent Pitt staggering to a 5-6 record. “We found out very quickly that we had a lot of work to do. We were probably just a little bit ahead of ourselves.”