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Kent State hampered by no game tape on Penn State

It hasn't been easy for Kent State coach Paul Haynes to get ready for his team's season opener this Saturday at Penn State.

It hasn't been easy for Kent State coach Paul Haynes to get ready for his team's season opener this Saturday at Penn State.

The only game film that exists of Trace McSorley, the Nittany Lions' new starting quarterback, comes from last season's TaxSlayer Bowl, and the team has scrapped that offense in favor of a new no-huddle attack. Haynes tried taping the telecast of the Blue-White Game in April to catch some of the new offense, but "you can barely see a lot of the things that happened," he said.

So the Golden Flashes will be going into Beaver Stadium for Saturday's game, also the Lions' first appearance of 2016, flying a bit blind.

"The first game is always tough, and then when you see new offenses and things like that, it makes it even tougher," Haynes said Monday on a conference call with Mid-American Conference coaches. "It kind of goes back to what we do . . . making sure that we get lined up and making sure that we get the calls in so our kids can play."

Haynes said Joe Moorhead, Penn State's new offensive coordinator, "knows his offense, knows his system. He's very good at it. He waits and sees what you're going to be in [on defense], and he puts them in a better play. So it's going to be difficult for us defensively."

Kent State finished last season with a 3-9 record and struggled on offense, finishing last among the 127 FBS schools in points per game (13.1) and third-down efficiency (25.4 percent conversion rate). The Golden Flashes have three quarterbacks competing to be the starter, and Haynes said all are going to play, starting with freshman Justin Agner and redshirt freshman Mylik Mitchell in the first half, and sophomore George Bollas in the second.

The Golden Flashes, who will travel to No. 1 Alabama on Sept. 24 to wrap up their nonconference schedule, are simply seeking improvement from game to game rather than solely focusing on pulling off an upset of a Power 5 team, Haynes said.

"That's not a goal of ours. Our goal is to win the MAC," he said. "So you go into these games and you just want to make sure you're getting better in all three phases.

"Do they have better personnel than we do? Yes. Do they have more depth than we do? Yes. So we've just got to go out there and make sure we play our style of football and execute and play and stay within ourselves and do the things that we need to do to win the football game."

Kent State last played in Beaver Stadium in 2013, a 34-0 win for the Nittany Lions.

jjuliano@phillynews.com

@joejulesinq