STATE COLLEGE — Mike Hull doesn’t think Penn State’s defense got the respect it deserved this season.
On Monday, the Nittany Lions’ senior middle linebacker got plenty of it, though.
Hull was named the winner of the Butkus-Fitzgerald Award, given annually to the Big Ten’s Linebacker of the Year. Hull and defensive tackle Anthony Zettel also received first-team all-conference status from both the coaches and the media.
The media elected redshirt freshman receiver DaeSean Hamilton to its second team, and kicker Sam Ficken earned second-team honors from the coaches and the media.
The Nittany Lions were a top-10 defense nationally, allowing 20 or fewer points in all but three games this season. Yet Hull said he never thought the Lions were in the conversation among the best teams nationally, taking a back seat to fellow conference teams like Michigan State and Ohio State.
“That kind of stuff eats at us a little bit,” Hull said last week.
Hull played like a linebacker intent on disproving the doubters all season.
After his 13-tackle performance in the 34-10 loss to the Spartans on Saturday, Hull finished the regular season with 134 tackles — fifth-most
all-time in a single season at Linebacker U. He led the Big Ten and piled up more than twice as many tackles as any other Nittany Lion, with Valley View grad Nyeem Wartman his nearest competitor, at 64.
Hull registered a career-high 19 tackles in the overtime loss to Ohio State in October, and he finished with at least nine in every game but one, the lopsided defeat of Massachusetts on Sept. 20.
Zettel burst onto the scene after moving to defensive tackle from defensive end, where he played during his first two seasons with the Nittany Lions. A major factor that helped the Nittany Lions to one of the nation’s best rush defenses, Zettel finished with 36 tackles, but a whopping 15 of them were made behind the line of scrimmage. He also had eight sacks and eight pass breakups at the line. Perhaps most impressively, he became the first Penn state defensive lineman to intercept three passes in a season since at least 1989.
When receivers coach Josh Gattis said in the summer that Hamilton would have a chance to be one of the best receivers in the Big Ten, many doubted. But the redshirt freshman who missed all of 2013 with a wrist injury proved to be Penn State’s most reliable target. He caught 75 passes for 848 yards and a touchdown.
Ficken was successful on 23-of-28 field goals and broke the Nittany Lions’ single-season record against Michigan State.