Sukay has extra motivation against Orange

Jeff Rice

Nick Sukay spent much of his career at Greensburg Central Catholic High School catching passes from Cody Catalina.

Sukay

View larger

When Penn State hosts Syracuse at noon Saturday, the Nittany Lions’ safety will try to prevent his old friend, who is now a tight end for the Orange, from catching passes.

“He’s put on a good amount of weight since he got there,” Sukay said. “He jokes about trying to run me over if he catches the ball.”

A third GCC Class of 2007 alumnus, Max Suter, will start at strong safety for Syracuse. When it came time to choose schools, Sukay could have headed to upstate New York with his two buddies but, like most schools, the Orange were recruiting him as a wide receiver. He wanted to play defensive back.

He would have settled for being anywhere on the field during his first two seasons at Penn State.

Sukay redshirted his freshman season but began to notice some pain in his right foot some time during the week leading up to the Alamo Bowl. It turned out that he had broken a small bone in his foot.

The following year, he was faced with a choice — try to play through the injury and earn some playing time on special teams or even as a reserve to Anthony Scirrotto and Mark Rubin, or have surgery and allow the foot to fully heal before making a run at a starting job this season.

He opted for surgery in September and estimated he was at 100 percent by January. This spring, he beat out converted linebacker Andrew Dailey, Cedric Jeffries and impressive true freshman Gerald Hodges for the starting safety job alongside Drew Astorino.

“I went through a long time being injured,” Sukay said. “It feels real good to be on the field. I’ve just got to go out and produce.”

The 6-foot-1, 213-pound Sukay was enjoying a solid afternoon in his first game as a starter against Akron until midway through the third quarter, when Zips quarterback Chris Jacquemain stepped up in the pocket and fired a strike down the middle to wide receiver Deryn Bowser. Bowser had gotten a step on Sukay and the safety never recovered. The play went for 40 yards and Akron’s only touchdown of the day.

As the Zips kicked the extra point, Penn State coach Joe Paterno made his way over to defensive coordinator Tom Bradley rather quickly for an explanation and glared at Sukay as he came off the field, but the coach didn’t chastise the redshirt sophomore for the mistake during his Tuesday news conference.

“He got a little careless with it, that’s all,” Paterno said.

Sukay said his teammates gave him some gentle teasing about the play but that he took it seriously and doesn’t want it to happen again.

“That was just a fundamental type thing,” Sukay said. “I had to stay on my backpedal and not open up my hips and that’s what I did wrong. It was nothing major but that looked pretty bad. So I’ll work on that this week.”

He’ll also break down some film to see where he might find Catalina running routes.

“We’re both looking forward to it,” Sukay said. “It’ll be fun to be competing against each other.”