Penn State ended a four-game losing streak on Halloween afternoon, beating Purdue 31-17 at Beaver Stadium. Per Yahoo Sports, the win was Matt Campbell's first Big Ten victory as a head coach. The Nittany Lions are 4-4 overall and 1-4 in the conference. Yahoo's game story said Penn State "battered Purdue up front on both sides of the football." It also quoted the team saying it had worked the last two weeks on "running the ball and ...", and the quote is cut off in the feed summary.
The box score backs up the line-of-scrimmage story. Penn State rushed 51 times for 269 yards, 5.3 a carry, and held the ball for 43:27. Purdue ran 15 times for 33 yards, 2.2 a carry, and had the ball for 16:33. Purdue was 2-for-11 on third down and managed 175 total yards to Penn State's 457. Yahoo's Purdue report card made the same point from the other side: the Boilermakers had a chance to run the ball and stop the run, and did neither.
Cam Wallace was the main reason. Yahoo's players-of-the-game piece said he had a career day, and the box score shows 22 carries for 135 yards and a touchdown, with a long of 48. Our game logs show only 116 rushing yards from him across the five earlier games he appears in, so this one game was bigger than all of those combined. Carson Hansen added 96 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries. Rocco Becht went 16-of-24 for 175 yards and a passing touchdown, and he ran for one more. Penn State had no turnovers. Purdue threw two interceptions, both from Ryan Browne, who went 10-of-29 for 142 yards and a touchdown.
The win was not clean. Penn State was flagged six times for 65 yards, and kicker Ryan Barker made one of three field goals. The Nittany Lions did go 3-for-3 on fourth down. Purdue, by comparison, scored on a Jalil Hall punt return touchdown as well as Browne's touchdown pass.
The outlets disagree on tone. One Yahoo piece calls it an "impressive" and "convincing" win, and another calls it "dominant." The blog-style takeaways piece is more guarded: "Breathe," it opens, and it lists an "Aggressive Matt Campbell" among its main points. That piece's complaint is cut off in the feed. Yahoo's game story put the win in the context of the schedule, calling it the Halloween gift Penn State needed with a month left in the regular season.
Purdue is the club in trouble. At 3-5 and 2-3 in the Big Ten, it has lost two straight, 38-26 to Washington on Oct. 16 and now this game. Both losses followed a 41-13 win over Minnesota on Oct. 10. A Yahoo headline said the team was "stuck in reverse, even after bye week." The Boilermakers host Maryland next Saturday, Nov. 7.
Penn State is 15th in the Big Ten and next travels to Washington on Nov. 7. That game will show whether a ground attack that produced 269 yards against Purdue can do it again.
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