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State police arrest two men accused of robbing gas stations

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Kings, Wilkes gear up for the Mayor’s Cup

The question was short. The answers were all the same.What&#8217;s been the biggest difference for Penn State since the summer?&#8220;Our confidence level has grown so much,&#8221; tailback Saquon Barkley said.&#8220;We&#8217;re playing with a lot of confidence right now, and it&#8217;s showing on the field,&#8221; wideout Chris Godwin said.&#8220;The confidence and the true belief of what this team really is and what we can be,&#8221; tight end Mike Gesicki said.The trick now is making sure that mindset doesn&#8217;t go too far.Psychology major that he is, James Franklin has had to work hard to prevent the Nittany Lions from getting too pleased with their top-10 ranking heading into Saturday&#8217;s game at Indiana.&#8220;I think with young people in general &#8212; and we have a young team &#8212; it&#8217;s magnified,&#8221; the Penn State coach said. &#8220;In general, a lot of times they handle adversity better than they handle success. As soon as you have some success and people patting you on the back, you can become complacent. You think you&#8217;ve arrived. That&#8217;s human nature.&#8220;It&#8217;s a challenge. A lot of things we do in our approach is to help with that by keeping our routine consistent. Keeping the approach the same. That helps.&#8221;As it is, Penn State is on track for an invitation to a New Year&#8217;s Six bowl if it can close out the month with three more wins, starting with the feisty Hoosiers.&#8220;We feel like we can compete with any team in the country,&#8221; Barkley said. &#8220;And we&#8217;re healthy. Being able to have our guys play is big. And if someone happens to go out, we have confidence in the backups. That&#8217;s a big reason for our success so much recently.&#8221;THREE AND OUTThe Wright StuffThe latest case of a backup stepping in was at the start of last week&#8217;s win over Iowa. Chasz Wright was forced into action at right tackle in place of Brendan Mahon, who played just three snaps before leaving with an apparent ankle injury.Wright is in line to make his first career start against the Hoosiers. Penn State confirmed a Centre Daily Times report Tuesday that Mahon had been admitted to Hershey Medical Center and was in stable condition.It&#8217;s unclear if Mahon&#8217;s hospital stay is at all related to his injury from Saturday. Franklin said after Wednesday&#8217;s practice that he would not be providing updates on Mahon&#8217;s status.That leaves Wright &#8212; a.k.a. &#8220;Bacon&#8221; or &#8220;Big Bacon&#8221; &#8212; a redshirt sophomore who had been working at guard earlier this season, as the starter indefinitely.&#8220;There started to be some signs in the spring with him. And then over summer, he had a really, really good summer,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;Our conditioning test is pretty tough and obviously it&#8217;s always tougher on the guys that are 345 pounds. And he passed the conditioning test the first time at 6-7, 345 pounds.&#8220;He&#8217;s really worked hard, he&#8217;s really invested. He&#8217;s a guy that has the length to play tackle and the athleticism to play tackle, but also has the girth that you can move him inside and be a road-grader at guard.&#8221;There will still be some growing pains.The lone sack last week against Iowa came when Wright missed an assignment, leading to a hard hit on Trace McSorley.&#8220;He obviously knew that he kind of messed up a little bit,&#8221; the quarterback said. &#8220;So the biggest thing is he knew what happened, and he knew how to fix it. I think that was the best thing for him was that he himself knew what he needed to do to not let that happen again.&#8220;For him to come in and step right in with the offensive line and continue to gel with the whole unit, I think was huge for him.&#8221;Four quarterbacks?Penn State certainly wanted to give defenses something to think about when they lined up the backup quarterback in the slot late in last week&#8217;s blowout.Tommy Stevens took the handoff on a sweep and scored his first career touchdown on the play. An Indianapolis native who was at one time committed to the Hoosiers, Stevens could very well find himself out there again at some point this week.Indiana will use both starter Richard Lagow and backup Zander Diamont, with the latter coming in to give a different look with his running ability.&#8220;I think the combination of those two, I think it maybe takes a little bit of pressure off of Richard,&#8221; Indiana coach Kevin Wilson said.Lagow, a junior college transfer, has thrown for plenty of yards but also an alarming 13 interceptions.The Lions are very familiar with Diamont, who played most of the last two meetings between the teams because of injuries.Defensive boostIndiana&#8217;s teams under Wilson &#8212; &#8220;one of the best offensive minds in college football,&#8221; Franklin said &#8212; have been excellent at scoring touchdowns but awful at preventing them.So it shouldn&#8217;t be a surprise that Wilson, now in his sixth season in Bloomington, is now on his fifth assistant coach to have &#8220;defensive coordinator&#8221; somewhere in his title.That man would be Tom Allen, an Indiana native who impressed his peers at South Florida and has the Hoosiers defensive numbers up across the board.&#8220;He&#8217;s really changed their program,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;That was a big hire. I know Kevin has been talking about that all offseason. Getting him to come to Indiana has made a big difference for them and they are playing really well on defense now.&#8221;<style>
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<div class="neCaption">Indianapolis native Tommy Stevens (2), a one-time Indiana recruit, could make another cameo this week against the Hoosiers. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_stevens-TD.jpg</photo0><caption0>Indianapolis native Tommy Stevens (2), a one-time Indiana recruit, could make another cameo this week against the Hoosiers. </caption0><photoCredit0>Chris Knight | AP photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Derek Levarsedlevarse@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta>PSU GAMEDAYNo. 10 Penn State (7-2, 5-1)at Indiana (5-4, 3-3)Noon, ABCMemorial StadiumBloomington, Ind.Line: PSU by 7</factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach Derek Levarse at 570-991-6396 or on Twitter @TLdlevarse</shirttailMeta></div>

Confident Nittany Lions ready for road test at Indiana