Top-Ranked Penn State Gets Lucky Two Fourth-Quarter Tds Allow Nittany Lions To Escape With Win
The room went silent. Tearful eyes all looked to the door. Into the Minnesota locker room walked Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
Paterno walked from one side of the room to the other. He stayed only a few minutes. He said four words.
“You should have won.”
First to the Gophers’ offense, then to the defense.
“You should have won.”
A man of class will admit when he is beaten, and that was what Paterno had come to do. Saturday at Beaver Stadium, his Nittany Lions, the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, escaped the Gophers 16-15.
Paterno said what the score didn’t.
“They had every right to win it,” he said after speaking to the Minnesota players. “They outplayed us. They outcoached us. It’s a shame they lost that football game.”
And how did Minnesota lose?
“We just outlucked them.”
Luck.
The team that was supposed to be five touchdowns better than Minnesota got the last of the luck. A penalty in the fourth quarter, a fumble not long after. Both led to the game’s only touchdowns. Both on runs by Curtis Enis. Both when Penn State had to have them.
“This game,” Lions linebacker Jim Nelson said, “was like a gift from God.”
A gift was not what 96,953 in attendance expected. Not what Penn State (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten) planned for its homecoming. But Minnesota coach Glen Mason changed everything when he turned his players loose by asking them before the game: “What is the worst that can happen?”
Minnesota, a 34-point underdog, played with reckless abandon. The Gophers (2-5, 0-3) led all but the final 4 minutes, and led 15-3 near the start of the fourth quarter on Adam Bailey’s fifth field goal.
The end - the score that won the game - was a 10-yard sweep by Enis with 3:59 to play. But the true end came a play earlier, when Thomas Hamner fumbled on the first play of a possession with the Gophers leading 15-10.
The Gophers lasted until the end because of Bailey, who kicked field goals of 52, 23, 32, 50 and 33 yards, breaking the Minnesota record and tying the modern-day Big Ten mark for a field goals in a game.