UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Athletics is off to another superlative start in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup, with the Nittany Lions posting their ninth consecutive top 10 fall finish.
In the final fall Directors’ Cup standings, Penn State is ranked No. 10. The Nittany Lions have finished in the top 10 in the fall rankings in 19 of the first 23 years of the Directors’ Cup. Penn State’s last fall finish outside the top 10 was in 2006-07 (13th).Penn State and Stanford are the nation’s only institutions to place in the top 10 in the final fall Directors’ Cup standings in each of the past nine years. North Carolina is next with eight consecutive top 10 finishes.Under the leadership of Director of Athletics Sandy Barbour, Penn State was No. 8 in the final 2014-15 Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings, earning its third consecutive Top 10 finish and 11th overall. The Nittany Lions are among only nine programs nationwide to have finished in the Top 25 in all 22 Learfield Sports Directors' Cup final standings.The Penn State women’s soccer team earned its first NCAA championship to lead the way for the Nittany Lions this past fall. Directed by Erica Walsh, the national Coach of the Year, Penn State defeated Duke, 1-0, to capture the NCAA Women’s College Cup. Senior Raquel Rodriguez, who scored the only goal in the NCAA title match, was selected the MAC Hermann Trophy and Honda Sport Award recipient for women’s soccer and the NSCAA Scholar Player of the Year.The Penn State women’s volleyball team advanced to the NCAA regional semifinals for the 13th consecutive year to earn Directors’ Cup points. The Big Ten champion women’s cross-country squad and men’s cross-country team also tallied points last fall, as did the Nittany Lion football team, which played Georgia in the TaxSlayer Bowl.Stanford leads the Directors’ Cup and is followed by Syracuse (347.5 points), North Carolina (342), Michigan (318.5), UCLA (300.5), Virginia (295), Minnesota (289), Washington (281), Notre Dame (275) and Penn State (273.5).The Big Ten, Atlantic Coast and Pac-12 conferences all claimed all top 10 spots in the final fall standings.Penn State student-athletes have an NCAA Graduation Success Rate of 88 percent and have earned 191 Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-America selections, the fourth-highest total among Division I programs. The Nittany Lions have won 75 team national championships and 95 Big Ten Conference crowns all-time, and Penn State’s 28 NCAA championships since 1992-93 are the most of any Big Ten institution.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.