ATLANTA — Penn State’s best player Saturday was sitting alone at a table in one corner of an interview room Saturday.
No one was paying much attention to Gov Mifflin product Nick Singleton, despite him gaining 147 all-purpose yards, scoring one touchdown and catching a two-point conversion pass in the Nittany Lions’ 38-25 loss to Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl.
“It hurts losing a game like this,” Singleton said. “We have to look in the mirror, fix what went wrong and learn from it. We gotta bounce back. We were ready to play, but we made too many mistakes.”
He played superbly. He rushed eight times for 50 yards, caught four passes for 86 yards and one touchdown and returned a kickoff 11 yards. He averaged more than 11 yards on 13 touches.
“I was just really playing,” Singleton said. “The coaches put me in a great position. I was just trying to gain yards and help my team win.”
Late in the second quarter, backup quarterback Beau Pribula entered the game on first down from the Ole Miss 48 with starting quarterback Drew Allar split to the left.
Pribula faked a handoff and found Singleton alone downfield. He caught the pass, turned and sprinted into the end zone to cut the Rebels’ lead to 20-17 at the half.
“We’ve been repping that play forever,” Singleton said. “We ran it in the game and it worked. Beau threw a good ball. I just started running.”
He didn’t do much running despite averaging 6.2 yards a carry. He ran for a 1-yard loss inside the 5 on the first play of the second quarter and carried it just once, for 6 yards, the next two quarters.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked why he didn’t get more runs. “It’s hard to tell. It depends on where the ball was and the down. We can’t blame the coaches.”
Social media antics: An X account called WEARE_PennSt made a post that caused a stir in the days leading up to the Peach Bowl.
The post included a quote that it attributed to Lions linebacker Kobe King, who hadn’t done an interview since November.
“Ole Miss will wish they never had to play us after we do what we came here to do,” the post read. “They can have that belt (awarded to the team who wins off-the-field contests during Peach Bowl week). We’ll embarrass them on the field.”
Rebels coach Lane Kiffin reposted it several times and admitted after the Peach Bowl that one of his student assistants created the account and posed the phony King quote.
“I thought it was pretty funny actually,” Kiffin said. “They discovered it was Fisher Ray, one of our assistants. So Fisher is now kind of famous. I thought it was really cool last night when he showed it to me.
“He’s like those Penn State fans now. They’re into this. It was all in good fun.”
King wasn’t laughing, but he shrugged it off.
“I found out last night,” he said. “One of my teammates sent it to me. It didn’t really matter. I didn’t pay much attention to it. They did what they did. It’s disappointing.”
Cephas missing: Penn State’s Dante Cephas, the transfer from Kent State, was not among the six wide receivers who played Saturday.
“Everything’s an open competition every week,” Lions coach James Franklin said, “and the depth chart reflects that. When you’re in a bowl situation and you’ve got three weeks, there’s a lot of movement that can occur.”
Cephas caught 22 passes in the regular season for 246 yards and two touchdowns, both against Maryland.
Trey Wallace returned to action Saturday after missing the last four games with an upper-body injury. He had four catches for 67 yards and a 14-yard TD pass in the fourth quarter. Liam Clifford had three receptions for 25 yards and was the only other Penn State wideout with a catch.
“You may not get an opportunity early in the game,” Franklin said, “but whenever those opportunities come you’ve got to maximize them. We have not done that consistently enough this year.”
