Penn State seeks rare win over ranked team

Things are looking up for Penn State football. The program has all its scholarships back after three years of limited numbers under NCAA sanctions. The Nittany Lions will lose only six seniors who have played regular roles on offense or defense this season.

The one thing that would reinforce this surge would be a signature win. The Lions have yet to defeat a ranked team in the two-season run of coach James Franklin, and will get another chance to pick one up Saturday on senior day at Beaver Stadium against No. 14 Michigan.

However, the words "signature win" don't ring well with Franklin. He feels a season is made up of 12 mini-seasons, and the goal is to go 1-0 in each of them whether his team is playing the Wolverines (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) or past opponents that are currently 2-8 like Army and Maryland.

"A win would be good," Franklin said Tuesday at his weekly teleconference. "We like wins. It would be awesome. Sundays are much better. Mondays are much better. Again, we don't make one win or one game out different than others. I know other people do.

"We want to be 1-0 this week. I know perception is a powerful thing because it's the person's reality of how they see situations and how they see things. Fans, media, everybody else, they tell stories, and I get that. That's part of it, I understand that. But for us, it's just another opportunity to play together, another opportunity to get a win."

Penn State hasn't defeated a ranked team since Nov. 30, 2013, when it went on the road and upset No. 14 Wisconsin, 31-24, in Bill O'Brien's final game as Penn State head coach.

The Nittany Lions (7-3, 4-2 Big Ten) had a golden opportunity to defeat a ranked team in their most recent game on Nov. 7. They held the lead over No. 21 Northwestern for much of the fourth quarter but lost, 23-21, on a 35-yard field goal with nine seconds left.

Penn State also has lost this season to Temple, which was ranked for four weeks in the Associated Press poll, and to Ohio State, which was ranked No. 1 for much of the season. Only one of the Nittany Lions' wins has come over a team - San Diego State - that now owns a winning record (7-3).

Franklin's only victory as a college head coach over a ranked team came in his final season at Vanderbilt in 2013 when the Commodores knocked off Georgia, their first such win since 1988.

But he didn't utter the words "signature win" then, and he didn't do it Tuesday, either.

For Franklin, his staff and his players, the added motivation for this game is to send the seniors off with a victory in the final home game of their careers.

"That kind of makes this a little bit different. . . . The last time these guys are going to run out in Beaver Stadium," he said. "I think that's probably the biggest difference."

Senior defensive end Carl Nassib is one of four finalists for the Rotary Lombardi Award for the nation's top college lineman (offensive or defensive). Ohio State's Joey Bosa, Texas A&M's Garrett Myles, and Clemson's Shaq Lawson are also finalists.

Nassib, a former Malvern Prep player, leads the FBS in sacks with 151/2.