June 18, 2012
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Following outstanding spring athletic campaigns, highlighted by women's lacrosse, men's volleyball and track and field, Penn State sits 10th in the most recent 2011-12 Learfield Sports Directors' Cup Standings.
Penn State will be looking for its 14th Top 15 finish in the 18-year history of the Directors' Cup, placing in the Top 25 every year, with eight Top 10 finishes. Stanford, who won its 17th consecutive Learfield Sports Directors' Cup for 2010-11, currently sits in first place. Penn State is one of three Big Ten schools that sit in the current Top 10 (Ohio State 3rd, Michigan 7th).
With 12 spring NCAA championships now completed, Penn State has accumulated 975.50 total points including 182.50 points from the spring. The final set of Division I standings will be released when the College World Series concludes.
The Penn State track and field team is coming off a stellar showing at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Des Moines, Iowa, where both Nittany Lions squads earned top 30 finishes in the team standings, led by a 21st-place effort from the men's team. The Nittany Lions were paced by a pair of fourth-place finishes, including outstanding efforts from senior Joe Kovacs (Nazareth, Pa.) and the men's 400-meter relay squad of Aaron Nadolsky (Altoona, Pa.), Brandon Bennett-Green (Elkins Park, Pa.), Casimir Loxman (New Haven, Conn.), and Brady Gehert (Altoona, Pa.). A total of eight Nittany Lions officially garnered United States Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches' Association First Team All-America status.
With a 3-0 sweep of Princeton in the EIVA Semifinals and a 3-1 win against George Mason in the EIVA Championship, Penn State men's volleyball won its 14th consecutive EIVA title and earned an automatic berth into the NCAA National Semifinals. Redshirt senior Joe Sunder (Greensburg, Pa.) was named a second team AVCA All-American by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA).
In women's lacrosse, Penn State finished the 2012 season with 12-7 record, earning the program's most wins since 2005 and its third consecutive double digit win season. Five of those wins came against ranked opponents, including three versus top 10 teams. Penn State excelled on the road in 2012, registering eight victories, the most by the Nittany Lions since the 1989 national championship team. Penn State received an at-large bid to the 2012 NCAA Championship, advancing to the quarterfinals for the first time since 1999.
Penn State is one of only nine programs nationwide that has finished in the final Top 25 in every Directors' Cup Standings, being joined by: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio State, Southern California, Stanford, Texas and UCLA.
Penn State has won 21 NCAA Championships since 1993-94, its first full year in the Big Ten Conference, more than double every other Big Ten institution. Iowa and Minnesota are tied for second with nine. The Nittany Lions' 11 NCAA Championships since March 2007 lead the nation.
The Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings were developed as a joint effort between the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and USA Today. Points are awarded based on each institution's finish in up to 20 sports -- 10 women's and 10 men's.