Nitt Picks Is Building A Spaceship

The excitement that greeted the announcement of Penn State's plans to add varsity hockey has subsided into casual ambivalence toward its progress now that the project has entered the boring establishment phase, but there's some fun news to pick over today.

The Board of Trustees hired Crawford Architects of Kansas City and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson out of Wilkes-Barre for the construction of Penn State's new ice arena on Friday and they have some nifty sounding plans for the building.

The team of architects will also look to take advantage of the location’s topography. Because the location is on a slope, Battista said the architects’ plan is to build the rink into the hill, which will allow the arena to utilize sunlight in lobby areas without affecting the ice. Because the ice will be below ground, less energy will be needed to keep it cold.

Along with that, Battista said the architects will look to take advantage of all modern technologies including solar panels and new energy efficient ways to create ice. He said the focus is sustainability.

"After that it was really just the fact that what they presented is really going to be a world-class, state of the art facility," Battista said.

I've never been real high on all these "go green" initiatives, but an ice arena with solar panels could look pretty sweet.  HOCKEYBEAR better look out, because Penn State hockey is gonna come get him in space before he even has a chance to lay a finger on Beaver Stadium.

It wasn't hard to see Penn State didn't have its A-game against East Stroudsburg on Sunday, and Ed DeChellis wasn't shy about describing his displeasure with how the Nittany Lions looked on offense.

"It was just like gear down, slow down," DeChellis said. "We didn’t run any of our offense. We were just running around."

...

"We were not very smooth," DeChellis said. "I tried to play everybody the first half. I think we did. I think that was part of it, but we just didn’t make any shots."

It should be said again that it was only an exhibition game, but if there's one time Penn State had a chance to make things easy on itself, it was yesterday. Instead, the Lions found themselves in a dog fight until well after halftime, and probably played some starters longer than they had hoped they would.

What made the stagnant offense worse, though, were the turnovers and missed free throws. Hopefully a lot of that will be cleaned up with more regular lineups on Friday night.

Mauti The Man

Mike Mauti now has some hardware of his own to celebrate win No. 400...

Penn State outside linebacker Michael Mauti today was named Big Ten Conference co-defensive player of the week.

He had a career-high 11 tackles, including three for losses, and a sack in Penn State's 35-21 come-from-behind victory over Northwestern at Beaver Stadium Saturday that gave Joe Paterno his 400th career coaching victory.

Mauti was pretty much a beast out there Saturday. On a defense where few beyond Ollie Ogbu are really sticking out, Mauti is starting to establish himself very well at linebacker. Now it's time to show some consistency. The linbacking core has kind of been a revolving door of characters all year. If Mauti can make himself as a fixture through the last three games and bowl game, it'll be a huge shot of momentum for the Penn State defense heading into next season.

In Scores Of Other Games

• Ron Cook haters...well you're going to have to be quiet for a few days. [PG]
• Relish BSD Mike's pain, as Jimmie Johnson is no longer atop the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup standings. [Yahoo]
• Volleyballer Katie Slay is racking up the awards [GoPSUSports.com]
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