Athletes at Penn State and pretty much everywhere else will use whatever extra motivation they can get to fuel them.
Michael Jordan was the king of this.
LaBradford Smith, who played for the Baltimore Bullets and, uh, wasn’t Michael Jordan, scored 37 against the Bulls in Chicago, then told Jordan, “nice game, Mike” as the two were headed off the court.
Three weeks later, the teams met again, and Jordan had 47… before the 4th quarter.
What’s crazy about this story is, as explained in “The Last Dance,” it never happened.
Theoretically, Penn State could invent bulletin board material ahead of the Aug. 31 opener against West Virginia in Morgantown.
Or, they could use what WVU and former Northwestern DB Garnett Hollis Jr. said last week.
“I would just say with them playing last year, they kind of did some of the similar stuff that they ran against Northwestern and how they ran against (WVU) Week 1,” Hollis told reporters. “I think they’re the same team. They don’t show too much respect for their opponents unless it’s Michigan or Ohio State, so I think that’s something that’s similar when they played each other.”
Hollis continued.
“I think it’s just going out there and outplaying them,” he said. “I think that’s the main key is, don’t give them a game. That’s what they want. That’s what they think every team is going to do, is give them a game. But I think when we go out there and punch them in the mouth and we take the life from them, I think that’s going to be the difference.”
So will Penn State use these comments as motivation, or just brush them off?
“I think some of us are using it as fuel,” Penn State DE Dani Dennis-Sutton told reporters after practice Tuesday. “As a player, they tell you all the time, ‘don’t talk about the other team’ and ‘focus, 1-0, sort of things.”
WVU defensive back Garnett Hollis Jr. made some interesting comments about Penn State last week, saying PSU doesn’t “show too much respect for their opponents unless it's Michigan or Ohio State."
Here’s PSU DE Dani Dennis-Sutton’s response to those comments. pic.twitter.com/eb7xb181k8
— Joe Smeltzer (@joesmeltzer775) August 21, 2024
Penn State LB Tony Rojas tries to stay away from media but he heard about the comments as well.
“I didn’t see the video, but obviously, I heard somebody talking about it in the locker room. I kind of just walk past it. Stuff like that, it’s just people talking and at game time, we’ll be there.
Dennis-Sutton said he felt no animosity toward Hollis.
“I don’t really know the guy, it’s nothing against him,” he said. “I’m sure he’s a great player at West Virginia. My whole thing was, you know, it just came off a certain way. But obviously, we’re going to use anything we can as fuel for the team.”
