No. 6 Penn State looks to rebound, avoid another setback against Washington

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No. 6 Penn State looks to rebound, avoid another setback against Washington

2024-11-08 00:20 Last Updated At：00:30

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State players know their goal is still within reach.

The No. 6 Nittany Lions (7-1, 4-1 Big Ten, No. 6 CFP) also realize a College Football Playoff berth could slip away if they let last week’s humbling loss to No. 3 Ohio State snowball.

They’re determined to rebound against Washington (5-4, 3-3 Big Ten) in front of a White Out crowd on Saturday.

“We control our own destiny,” quarterback Drew Allar said. “We have a really good team coming into town that’s playing a lot of good ball right now. So it’s going to be a challenge this week for us offensively and we got to step up to the challenge.”

The Huskies aren’t the Buckeyes, but they still pose a threat.

Washington will bring the nation’s second-ranked pass defense and a little swagger to Beaver Stadium, fresh off a late goal-line stand that helped upend Southern California last week.

While Washington stymied the Trojans from the 1 late in the fourth quarter to help snap a two-game losing skid, Penn State was on the other side of a similar situation.

The Nittany Lions ran four plays inside the Ohio State 3 with just over five minutes to play a week ago. Three runs up the middle went nowhere and a fourth-down pass fell incomplete. Ohio State took possession and ran out the clock.

“We got to do some things better scheme-wise, but also we've got (to) do little bit better job fundamental and technique-wise to make sure we get the movement we need,” Penn State coach James Franklin said.

Allar knows this will be a tough matchup for his wide receivers, but he’s determined to get them going this week.

Since tight end Tyler Warren’s 17-catch game against USC on Oct. 12, Penn State’s top three wideouts have combined for only 12 catches in games against Wisconsin and Ohio State.

Liam Clifford and Omari Evans were held without a catch by the Buckeyes and will now line up against a secondary allowing a Big Ten best 142 passing yards per game. Additionally, the Huskies have picked off eight passes this season, including three last week.

“If not the best, they’re one of the best,” Allar said. “They just stick to guys in coverage. So we’re going to have to make contested catches throughout the whole four quarters this weekend.”

The Nittany Lions need more from their running game.

Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen combined for four 100-yard rushing performances to start the year. They’ve failed to eclipse that threshold since.

Ohio State’s physical defense held Singleton to a career-worst 15 yards on six carries while Allen managed only 27 yards on 12 carries.

“We got to get our traditional running game going,” Franklin said. “I think that’s going to be a combination of both still doing some of the heavy stuff, but I think we can expand on some of the spread stuff as well to get some guys out of the box to create more space.”

Washington coach Jedd Fisch has experienced a Beaver Stadium White Out — where nearly all of the 107,000-plus fans wear white and virtually glow under the lights.

Sure, it’s a sight, but the noise that comes with it poses the biggest challenge.

Fisch said he spent time earlier this week showing his players clips from Michigan’s 2015 win in Beaver Stadium when Fisch was part of Jim Harbaugh’s staff.

“I know they’ll be loud,” Fisch said. “We’ve just got to go play ball and try to see if we can play the best game we’ve played all year.”

Fisch has had to monitor running back Jonah Coleman’s workload since the junior was unable to finish a game against Rutgers on Sept. 27.

Following the team’s bye three weeks ago, Coleman has looked better and better. He topped out with a career-high 23 carries against the Trojans. He leads the Huskies with 889 yards on 141 carries and seven touchdowns.

“We needed that bye week for Jonah to get back to as healthy as he could be,” Fisch said. “Our goal is about 20 carries. He had 58 (total) plays in the (USC) game, so not just the carries, but in the pass game. That’s a pretty substantial amount of reps for a running back.”

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Hong Kong rings in 2026 without fireworks after deadliest blaze in decades

HONG KONG (AP) — Fireworks are typically a celebratory centerpiece of Hong Kong's New Year celebrations. Not this year.

The territory will ring in 2026 without spectacular and colorful explosions in the sky over its iconic Victoria Harbor after a massive fire in November that killed at least 161 people.

The city’s tourism board will instead host a music show Wednesday night featuring soft rock duo Air Supply and other singers in Central, a business district that also is home to the famous nightlife hub Lan Kwai Fong. The facades of eight landmarks will turn into giant countdown clocks presenting a three-minute light show at midnight.

Fireworks have long been part of the city’s celebrations for the New Year, Lunar New Year and National Day. The pyrotechnic displays against Hong Kong’s world-famous skyline of skyscrapers typically draw hundreds of thousands of people including many tourists to both sides of the promenade.

Rosanna Law, the territory's secretary for culture, sports and tourism, acknowledged Tuesday that having no fireworks would affect some hotel and restaurant businesses.

The financial hub’s worst blaze since 1948 broke out at Wang Fuk Court, in the northern suburban district of Tai Po, in late November. The apartment complex was undergoing a monthslong renovation project with buildings covered by bamboo scaffolding and green netting.

Authorities have pointed to the substandard netting and foam boards installed on windows as contributing factors in the fire’s rapid spread. Thousands of affected residents have moved to transitional homes, hotels and youth hostels, struggling to recover from the loss of lives and homes that took them years to buy. The casualties pained many residents across the city.

Past tragedies in Hong Kong have forced similar cancellations of fireworks. They include the 2013 National Day festivities following a vessel collision that killed 39 people on Oct. 1, 2012, and the 2018 Lunar New Year celebration after a bus crash that left 19 dead. During the 2019 anti-government protests and the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple displays also were scrapped.

The origin of fireworks is believed to date to China in the second century B.C., when someone discovered bamboo stalks exploded with loud bangs when thrown into fire, creating the first natural “firecrackers,” according to the American Pyrotechnics Association, a U.S. trade group.

The Guinness World Records organization says the first accurately documented firework, the Chinese firecracker, was created by Li Tian, a monk from China’s Tang dynasty dating to around 618 to 907 C.E. Li discovered that putting gunpowder in enclosed hollow bamboo stems created loud explosions and bound crackers together to create the traditional New Year firecrackers to drive out evil spirits, Guinness said.