Penn State football opens spring practice; Jalen Pickett earns AP All-American honors: Newsstand
Penn State news, notes, and updates for March 15 include the start of the Lions’ spring practices, plus more honors for Jalen Pickett and much more.
Penn State tweets of the day
We start with spring practice. Lions head coach James Franklin held a news conference at Beaver Stadium and then the team held its first of 15 practices inside of Holuba Hall on a chilly afternoon in State College.
“I think 15 practices to me is kind of the sweet spot,” Franklin said. “It really — we try to mirror spring ball with training camp. So although it’s probably much better from an installation standpoint because you’re able to go meeting one day, practice the next and stagger it that way. Where in training camp, it’s every day. So I think from a learning perspective it’s probably more valuable, but then my point is, really our 15 installs in spring ball will be very similar to our first 15 practices in summer camp.
“So it’s almost like, okay, now they have been through it once, now they get it the second time during summer camp. The other thing I think will be helpful is it’s again it’s early to say this, but based on our numbers right now we anticipate going back to a traditional spring game look we’ve had in the past. I know a lot of people have again away from that. I think there’s value in it.”
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See some scenes from practice below.
In other news, Penn State guard Jalen Pickett continues to rack up plenty of honors. On Tuesday, he was named an Associated Press All-American. In addition to that, he was picked as the U.S. Basketball Writers Association District II Player of the Year. He also was selected for the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) All-District 7 first team and received USBWA All-District II honors.
Headlines of the day
Penn State’s James Franklin on replacing Juice Scruggs, updates on Olu Fashanu and Landon Tengwall, more: Flounders, PennLive
Penn State spring stage set ahead of practice start: Bauer, BWI
Jalen Pickett Is Penn State’s First All-American Since 1955: Wogenrich, SI
Projecting Penn State Football’s spring depth chart on offense: Fitz, BWI
Why Penn State football’s hire of Deion Barnes was the correct choice: Allen, Daily Collegian
Penn State coach James Franklin explains why Deion Barnes is the Lions’ new defensive line coach: Pickel, BWI
Barnes a Key Part of the Large Alumni Contingent on Penn State Football’s Staff: Poorman, Statecollege.com
Quote of the day
“When you go out and hire maybe a more experienced coach from the outside, you get that, but then that guy’s got to spend time learning the defense and understanding the culture. So you could make arguments both ways. But I was very impressed with Deion and how he interviewed.
“The last thing I’ll say, I know this is a long answer, but I think the other thing that really jumped out to me that I thought he did a good job in the interview process is you felt — not only did you hear it, but you felt his passion for coaching D-line, you felt his passion for Penn State, and you felt his passion for this specific group of defensive linemen that he has a relationship with. So it was kind of all of that. It was all of that.”
—PSU coach James Franklin on the reasons why he picked Deion Barnes’ as the team’s new defensive line coach.
