One week after being on the wrong side of a record-breaking night against Tennessee (4-0, 1-0), the Kent State Football team was again involved in a record-breaking game, and the team was on the wrong side of it again.
The road trip to Happy Valley resulted in the second straight week without points for the Flashes in a 56-0 loss to Penn State (3-0, 0-0).
The loss extends the nation’s longest losing streak to 13 and leaves Kent State with a record of 0-4 heading into conference play.
“It’s a guy here or there that isn’t doing their job,” coach Kenni Burns said. “We talked about being disciplined. We have to be way more disciplined.”
Burns also pointed out the youth on his squad.
“We’re still a very, very young football team,” he said. “You look out there, there are a ton of freshmen playing, true freshmen, and they have to learn from this and take what they’ve learned into conference play.”
After redshirt junior quarterback Devin Kargman was carted off the field and taken to the hospital with a leg injury, it was freshman J.D. Sherrod taking snaps for the Flashes.
“When Dev went down, I knew the explosive play battle was going to be hard,” Burns said. “J.D has some strengths, but throwing the ball downfield is not one of them. He does a better job with his feet.
Sherrod threw six passes and completed two of them for 18 yards before he was injured in the second quarter and was replaced by junior Tommy Ulatowski.
41 yards was all the offense could generate in the first half, and it slowed down even more when Ulatowski came late in the first half. He went 0-6 passing, and the team mustered only 26 yards in the second half.
The three quarterbacks combined for 1.4 yards per pass, while the running game was not much better, averaging 1.7 yards per attempt.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on there, but we’ll have more information in the press conference on Monday,” Burns said on Kargman’s injury.
The offense continued to struggle on third down, going 1-11, leaving them with a conversion rate of 8-53 on the season (15.09%), last in the FBS.
With this being the second straight game in which Kent came up empty on the scoreboard, its average points per game through four games is now 10.25, which is 133rd out of 134 teams in the FBS.
Entering the game, the Flashes were last in the FBS with 201.33 yards per game. Their 67 yards against Penn State will not improve that standing, and will drag their average down to 167.75 yards per game.
During its first drive, the defense got their fourth takeaway of the season when junior defensive end Kameron Olds picked off Penn State’s backup quarterback Beau Pribula. With the offense avoiding any turnovers, Kent State now has a plus one turnover margin on the season.
However, the interception by Olds was one of just three stops by the defense on the day. In the last two games, the Flashes defense has faced 23 combined drives, and has given up a score on 19 of them, with 16 of them being touchdowns.
Penn State gained 718 yards, which broke the 1926 school record of 711 yards against Susquehanna University. Kent State’s defense now gives up 606.75 yards per game. The 56 points allowed brings the Flashes’ nation-worst scoring defense to 51.25 points per game allowed.
Penn State’s offensive attack was balanced, picking up 309 yards on the ground and 409 through the air. The two-headed monster at running back for the Nittany Lions, Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen, averaged 7.4 and 6.0 yards per rush respectively.
“They have a really good line,” Burns said. “They have really solid running backs that I played against when I was at Minnesota, so I knew we had our hands full.”
PSU quarterback Drew Allar threw for 309 yards, three touchdowns and rushed for one more on a day where he had just four incompletions.
“He’s very talented,” Burns said. “He’s a very good football player, he doesn’t have many weaknesses. He’s good at responding. I think that’s the sign of a really elite quarterback.”
Allar was one of three Penn State players to throw a touchdown against Kent State. The backup Pribula threw one, and the tight end Tyler Warren threw a touchdown pass to Singleton on a trick play.
The Flashes will come back to Dix Stadium for the first time in three weeks for their homecoming game against Eastern Michigan (3-1, 0-0) Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
Kent State walks out of conference play winless and is last in the FBS in many categories, but they still have everything in front of them in terms of conference play.
“If we use what we’ve learned the past two weeks against the talent that we played and the schematics that we played against, I think we’ll be just fine in conference play,” Burns said.
Demetri Manousos is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
