Kent State’s non-conference schedule has a distinct Pennsylvania flare in 2024. With games at Pittsburgh and Penn State, and a home game with St. Francis, the Flashes get three opportunities against the Keystone State.
For Kent State, it’s a chance to make an impression in recruiting. To sell their brand of KentGRIT football in a nationally televised game Saturday, and later in the season at Penn State.
With such good high school football being played in Pennsylvania, the state has always been part of the KSU recruiting base in all sports. There are a lot of great players in the state, and they all can’t play in the Power Four conferences. Kent State has a chance to make themselves a viable option moving forward.
Kent State Head Coach Kenni Burns was asked about the topic Monday at his press conference from the Pittsburgh media.
“It’s big. The Oliver Billottes, Gavin Garcias. PA guys that grew up in that area, maybe wanting to go to Pitt or Penn State, and it ended up being a great fit for Kent State. To get those guys back to be around their family, their friends and play in those venues is something that’s special. There’s no doubt that area is big to us.”
Kent State currently has nine Pennsylvania natives listed on their roster and will look to add more in future recruiting classes. With two coaches recruiting in the state and a strong alumni base, the “State of Kent” no doubt includes western PA.
“It’s an hour and a half away,” Burns continued. “ We’ve got two coaches down there recruiting it. It’s a place that we want to build a pipeline to, so for me we would love to play this game every couple of years because it gets our colors down there. We look at our alumni base and it’s huge in the Pittsburgh area as well so there’s a lot of familiarity with our program down there and that’s exciting for our players, our coaches and really for our football program.”
For Billotte, the non-conference schedule for KSU is something that he has a lot of ties and emotions to.
“Penn State is 40 minutes away from me,” Billotte said at Media Day on July 19. “We had season tickets growing up. Pitt was my dad’s favorite team growing up. My head football coach played at Penn State and then my wrestling coach and football d-line coach played at Pitt so those are two big games for me mentally just to be able to go and play in stadiums that I dreamed of playing in growing up and on top of that, coming from a small town, you don’t play extreme talent growing up but the two kids that I played that both went Division I, ended up going to St. Francis those are two friends of mine that I’ll get to play as well.”
Of course, the absolute best way to make this a special memory for the current KSU players, and really make an impression in the state and beyond, is a strong performance and a WIN.
Kent State enters the game Saturday as a 24.5 point underdog.