PREVIEW: PSU V.S. West Virginia
Disrupt U PSU Presents The Penn State Pulse With Dylan Dawson and in this episode, Dylan discusses the upcoming game between Penn State and West Virginia. He highlights key players to watch on both teams and makes predictions for the game. Dawson also mentions the spread and the recent money coming in for West Virginia. He predicts the first touchdown scorer for Penn State, expects a dominant performance from Penn State's rush defense and singles out Liam Clifford as the leading receiver for Penn State. He concludes with his final score prediction and expresses excitement for the start of the season..
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Dylan Dawson:
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Welcome back into the Penn State paulse I'm your host,
Stylan Dawson. I'm all moved into the new apartment. Feels
great to be back in state college and it is
finally here. Welcome to Game Week. We are recording this
episode on Wednesday night, August twenty eighth, just three days
before this matchup where number eight Penn State travels to
Morgantown to take on West Virginia in the season opener.
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This game will be a noonkick on Fox. The spread
has been interesting to follow. That opened around PSU by
thirteen or fourteen and that now sits down at eight
as I'm recording this, so there has been a lot
of money coming in for the Mountaineers. An important stat
to note is that West Virginia is zero to four
against the spread in its last four games against ranked teams.
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Shout out Josh Pate for finding that one. All right,
let's jump into some WVU players to watch. Penn State
won this matchup last season by the score of thirty
eight to fifteen in Beaver Stadium, but many think this
year could be a different story. So I'm gonna give
you guys a few names to keep an eye on
and that could be a difference maker for West Virginia
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on Saturday. So the first name to mention is obviously
West Virginia quarterback Garrett Green. He struggled last season with accuracy,
as he completed passes at about a fifty three percent clip.
Reports are though, that he did have a pretty good
offseason regardless of where he stands there in that passing game, though,
he is someone who can absolutely beat you every single
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game with his legs. He is a quick and elusive runner,
so the Netty Lions will probably have to assign a
spy on the majority of defensive downs. Moving on the
Donaldson and White running back duo, starting with CJ. Donaldson.
He will return for them at halfback and standing at
about six two to two, that is not an easy
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tackle to make. He went for eighty one yards and
a touchdown in twenty twenty three against Penn State and
about eight hundred yards and eleven touchdowns on the whole season.
His complimentary piece, who hails from my hometown of York,
Pa is Jaheem White and White is quite literally the
opposite style of back as he is about five to
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seven one ninety five and he went for about eight
hundred and fifty yards and four touchdowns in twenty twenty three.
He did that on slightly over one hundred carries too,
which averaged out to seven point seven yards per carry.
So he's more of their big play guy, whereas Donaldson
is kind of just that bruiser who can help in
those goal line and short yardage situations. The next name
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I wanted to mention, and the final offensive name here
is rick Darius Farmer, who is a true freshman wide
receiver that they flipped from Pitt, which is pretty interesting
considering that that's a pretty strong rivalry between Pitt and
West Virginia. But yeah, Ric Darius, he goes by dayde Farmer.
He's had a very nice offseason according to a lot
of reports out of Morgantown, and he could be their
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big play guy from the jump. He's still a bit undersize,
standing at five to eleven one sixty five one seventy,
but it's been said that he has the speed to
make up for it. Moving on to the defense, Aubrey
Burks is probably their best player on that side of
the ball. The five foot eleven safety from Florida posted
forty eight tackles, four passes defense two interceptions, one and
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a half sacks, and one forced fumble last season, so
he's just kind of all over the field for them.
He's going to be in the back of that defense
kind of leading them. He's a very experienced veteran, so
I expect him to do his best to keep them
in the game on Saturday. And then looking down along
that defensive line, Sean Martin is the difference maker there.
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He stands at about six five, three hundred and is
a force for the Mountaineers. He does necessarily pad the
stat sheet, but he's constantly forcing pressure on the passer
and especially calgging those rushing lanes. He wears number ninety one.
I can almost promise there will be at least one
place Saturday that makes you go, who was that? And
it'll be Sean Martin. So let's jump into some predictions
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in this second segment of the podcast. First, I'm gonna
try and call the first touchdown of the season for
Penn State, and that was between two guys for me,
and it's two guys who I think will have a
huge impact on this game Saturday, and that is tight
end Tyler Warren and running back k Tron Allen. So
I'm gonna lock this in right now. Your first Knite
line to score a touchdown this season will be k
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Tron Allen. K Tron should be used a ton in
this game, especially in those goal line situations. I think
he actually ends up getting more carries than Nick Singleton,
but Nick gets more snaps. Overall. Ak's gonna work Nick
into the past game a bunch, and I believe we'll
see that from the jump this season, starting in a
few days against WVU. My second prediction is going to
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come on the defensive side of the ball. West Virginia
ran for one hundred and forty six yards on Penn
State last season. They didn't exactly have their way with
PSUs front, but they were able to consistently generate chunk
plays in the run game. West Virginia lost a ton
of talent on their offensive line this past offseason, mostly
to the NFL Draft, and that includes elite center Zach Frazier,
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who is now a Pittsburgh Steeler. They have the talent
in their backfield. That running back duo I mentioned earlier
is great, probably a top five or six duo in
the country. But I think PSU returning all four of
their top d tackles from last season, combined with the
Mountaineers throwing a lot of offensive linemen with less experience
in there will result in a fairly dominant performance from
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Penn State's rush defense. So prediction number two, Penn State
holds West Virginia under one hundred total rush yards this Saturday.
Oh right. My final prediction before I take a stab
at this final score involves the ever evolving roller coaster
that is the PSC wide receiver room. So I'm going
to single one guy out and I'm gonna say that
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Liam Clifford leads all Penn State wide receivers in receptions
against West Virginia. He's had, from all reports, an awesome
all season and seems ready to not only start but
be a meaningful contributor in pretty much every game. I
still have Trey Wallace at wide receiver one on the season.
I'm pretty bullish on that. If you've seen any of
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these other podcasts where I talked about him, he was
probably supposed to be wide receiver one last year before
he actually got hurt. But tying this back to Clifford,
give me a strong game from leam Clifford to open
the season, all right, and then to close us out,
we have the final score prediction. I do think this
is a fairly sloppy game from Penn State. For one,
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they're breaking in all three new coordinators in their first
season here, as well as the second reason, which is
the projected weather forecast that is supposed to be high eighties,
pretty humid, showers in the morning, and then a very
high chance of rain around noon or one PM is
when it should start. So maybe the rain holds off
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until later in the game, but we'll likely see a
lot of this game played in wet conditions. So I'm
gonna say that the West Virginia keeps it close in
the first half at least, but the Nitney Lions are
able to just sort of lean on them kind of
what Michigan's been doing to teams the last two years,
and just finish out with a win to open the season.
So give me Penn State twenty seven, West Virginia seventeen.
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I leave on Friday morning with some friends, so I
can't wait to get down to Morgantown and hopefully kick
off this season in the right way, which would be
with a mark in the win column. So that is
going to do it for today's episode. Thank you so
much for tuning into The Penn State Pulse. I'm your host,
Dylan Dawson. I'll see you in Morgantown.
Liam Clifford is predicted to lead all Penn State wide receivers in receptions.
No. 8/9 Penn State begins the 2024 season with a road matchup at West Virginia. Kickoff is set for noon on FOX at Milan Puskar Stadium.
BIG NOON KICKOFF: Penn State will appear as FOX's Big Noon Kickoff in week one. Penn State was the featured game three times in 2023.
SERIES HISTORY: Penn State meets West Virginia for the 61st time in program history. The Nittany Lions own a 49-9-2 advantage in the series, including five-straight wins. Penn State is 17-6-1 in road games and has won 33 of the last 35 matchups. In last year's contest, Penn State cruised to a 38-15 victory. Drew Allar threw for 325 yards and three touchdowns, while Nicholas Singleton rushed for 70 yards and a score. Penn State held the Mountaineers to 162 passing yards, while collecting three sacks.
