"Everything's going downhill instead of uphill," tight end Isaac Smolko said. "Right now, I don't know what to feel. I don't know what's going on with our team."
As senior quarterback Zack Mills put it, "we haven't won a game in forever, it seems like." Defensive tackle Scott Paxson felt "lousy," and cornerback Alan Zemaitis wanted to "put my fist through a wall." And the typical excuses -- poor officiating, bad field position -- simply didn't hold up this time, because the team had so many things go its way.
"God can only bless you with so many blessings in order for you to get the job right," Zemaitis said. "We had some plays that were questionable called for us, not for the other team. And they were getting penalties, personal fouls. I gotta say we had opportunities to win the game. Especially when we're in the red zone and we don't score -- we had the game."
Penn State's offensive woes couldn't have started any earlier than they did -- on the first play of its first possession. The Nittany Lions surrendered the ball via an interception thrown by wideout Michael Robinson, and the response to the turnover was a Wildcats touchdown.
"It's tough for me to get my pads off, man," Robinson said. "I just feel like if I can go back out there and play a whole 'nother game, it would be different."
It's not hard to see how the outcome could have been different -- Mills played well, with zero interceptions and 183 passing yards, and tailback Tony Hunt caught 10 passes and ran for 96 yards. The problem is, the plays simply didn't come when they mattered.
"We just staggered around in there at different times when we could have made some things happen," Penn State coach Joe Paterno said. "We just didn't make them happen."
Penn State's only score came with the help of the defense, as safety Paul Cronin picked off a Brett Basanez pass late in the second quarter. The resulting touchdown -- a 2-yard Mills pass to Smolko -- only tied the game, but celebratory times have been rare, and so Mills shook both fists and pointed up at the sky, in thanks. "It was about time, you know?" he said.
All it took, however, was a 13-play, 83-yard drive by the Wildcats to make that touchdown ancient history. Though Penn State's defense was solid, Northwestern was able to find ways to pick it apart.
"What they did well was they found a scheme in our defense, and they stuck to it," Zemaitis said. "We gotta be able to stop it -- we gave up 14 points, but we gotta be able to hold them."
With Penn State's first chance to score in the second half ending in a wide right 31-yard field goal by Robbie Gould, it had one final chance to save the game late in the fourth quarter.
But four plays from the Northwestern 14-yard line -- including a third down pass from Mills to Robinson that, had it not bounced off his fingertips, would likely have been a touchdown -- turned the prospect of a win into, once again, the resignation to a loss.
After the game, a reporter started to say to Mills, "You had opportunities that you couldn't cash in on, but the end result was ... " Mills then interjected.
"The same," he said, completing the obvious. "Every loss is worse and worse. And harder to swallow. We did have our opportunities this game, and we didn't take advantage of them, even at the end of the game."
That's the routine, after all.
