Penn State coach James Franklin offers update on Caedan Wallace, Olu Fashanu, and Keyvone Lee for Rose Bowl
STATE COLLEGE — Penn State football coach James Franklin believes three Nittany Lions who missed time in either October, November, or both due to injury could be back for the team’s Jan. 2 matchup with Utah in the Rose Bowl.
Starting left tackle Olu Fashanu missed the final three regular season games of the year. Onetime first-team right tackle Caedan Wallace missed the final four. And back Keyvone Lee, who began the year as the starter, sat out the final five. However, they could all be back in Pasadena, Calif., for the top-15 matchup.
“As you guys know, there’s still some time, and there’s no reason to rush these guys,” Franklin said Friday at the team’s local bowl media day at Beaver Stadium. “I haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk with them and where we’re at. But, right now, we are planning for Olu and Caeden to be available.
“That could change. We’ll see how this thing goes. We’re not going to rush either of them back at all. It will be based on where the medical staff feels that they are and where these guys feel they are, both physically and mentally. I’ll even throw a bonus one in there, Keyvone Lee; we’re expecting to have all three of those. So we’ll see how it plays out.”
Freshman Drew Shelton took on the starting left tackle role with Fashanu sidelined. Bryce Effner took Wallace’s first-team reps at right tackle. And, Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen took over the running backs reps, of course, before and after Lee went out.
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The Penn State path to the Rose Bowl
There is much for Franklin, his staff, and his team to do before Penn State leaves for Pasadena in about two weeks. The program must close out the Class of 2023 while also continuing to seek out possible transfer portal additions. And, bowl practices are underway as the Lions prepare to turn their attention away from development drills and toward preparing for the No. 8 Utes, who are the PAC-12 champions.
“We were back in town last weekend, but it was mainly practice and official visits,” Franklin said. “It was more of like program development type practices, like a spring ball type practice, where we hadn’t really got into our opponent in great detail at that point. So this will be a busy weekend getting caught up on film and those types of things.
“We will practice [Friday night]. We were supposed to practice today, but classes got canceled yesterday so exams kind of pushed to today during our practice time. So, we ended up having to push our practice time back, or we would have missed too many guys from practice. So we’ll practice today then take tomorrow off because of graduation.”
