Penn State's Massaro goes down with torn ACL

An already-depleted Penn State defensive line received more bad news yesterday when Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli, the school's director of athletic medicine, confirmed that starting defensive end Pete Massaro would miss the 2011 season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during practice on Friday.

The 6-4, 264-pound Massaro, an all-stater at Marple Newtown High, has been beset with injuries since arriving in State College in the summer of 2008. He was redshirted that season and sat out the 2009 season after tearing the ACL in his right knee during the Blue-White spring game.

After rehabbing the repaired right knee, the redshirt junior emerged as the top big-play guy on the defensive line for the Nittany Lions in 2010, registering 37 tackles (20 unassisted), eight stops behind the line of scrimmage, 3 1/2 sacks, a forced fumble and a recovered fumble. He also was a first-team CoSIDA Academic All-America, posting a 3.82 grade-point average in finance.

Sebastianelli said Massaro would undergo surgery sometime in the next 2 to 3 weeks, followed by 9 months of rehabilitation. Massaro conceivably would be eligible for a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA were he and Penn State to seek a medical waiver.

The loss of Massaro for the remainder of spring drills, which conclude April 16 with the Blue-White intrasquad scrimmage, is exacerbated by the absence of two other veteran defensive ends, Jack Crawford (foot) and Eric Latimore (wrist). They already were being held out with injuries that have not fully healed. Junior Sean Stanley and redshirt freshmen Kyle Baublitz and C.J. Olaniyan figure to get most of the repetitions at the position for the remainder of the spring.

Penn State also picked up its fourth verbal commitment for the recruiting class of 2012 yesterday in Jesse James, a 6-7, 245-pound tight end/defensive end from South Allegheny High, outside of Pittsburgh. James is projected to play tight end in college.