The Beginning Of The End. A Chance To Get Better.

You can't ask for a better trap to be set. 

Coming off of a poison pill of a loss, where every single aspect of the loss eventually just boiled down to the injury to the starting quarterback and how the entire team reacted to that loss.  If that injury doesn't occur, you would have a hard time convincing anyone that the result isn't going be flipped.

Thankfully, the injury doesn't appear to be season threatening and the potential is there that the starter might be back even as soon as the Ohio State game at the end of the month.

Now coming in for Homecoming is an Illinois team that has won just 2 games to start the year and is coming off a 24-0 loss to Wisconsin.  The only thing left to play for are the upsets in mostly filled away stadiums.  To try and spoil someone else's homecoming.

Yet expectations seem to abound that Penn State will simply roll over this Illinois team by simply showing up.  The buzz that was in the air throughout State College has been replaced with a sense of apathy.  A sense that this Penn State team might have already peaked and that this Illinois team is an unmotivated sorry program that just had their head coach question whether he has a single player with any talent.

That can't be allowed to be the case.

The culture of Penn State needs to be present and involved in this moment.

This is the beginning of the end.  Six games left and the potential to play for the Big Ten championship and get and even the National Championship.  Every game matters.  Every play.  Including this week at noon.

Penn State needs to use this week to get better.  They need to use this week to focus on Illinois and doing the every little thing right.  Not because they seriously believe that Illinois is as formidable as Auburn or Iowa, but that this process is how they are going to win the next week and the week after that.

That is the crux of the 1-0 mentality.  It places all of our energy not on future problems that we can't control, but on the immediate processes that we can.  Each workout, each study hall, each film session, every class, it's all in service to our greater goals.

It is the process of preparing with the set goals of improving and getting better than you were the day before.  It isn't enough to maintain in the middle of the season.  Instead it's the perfect time to get better.

While other team's hit their metaphorical wall's, we need to attempt to separate from our prior standards and improve on them.  Improving through out the season and aware of the curse of complacency.

So when the ball is kicked off this Saturday, I expect Penn State as an entire community to be excited, to be tuned in and ready to celebrate this homecoming.