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First-year Owls coach Al Golden, a former Lions player, left Penn State, where he'd been the linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator in 2000, to go to Virginia as defensive coordinator. He remained with the Cavaliers through last season.

There was a perception that some at Penn State had been unhappy that Golden had left after just one season on the staff.

Current Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, who along with offensive coordinator Galen Hall has become the public face of the program in Joe Paterno's absence, disputed that.

"There are no hard feelings at all," Bradley said this week. "Al went down and had a chance to be a coordinator and decided that was the best thing for him to do and it was a chance for him, he felt, to better himself. In this profession, any time that happens, that is a good thing."

Quarterback Adam DiMichele, a redshirt sophomore from Sto-Rox High School, originally had signed a letter-of-intent with Penn State but backed out of it. Penn State did not release DiMichele, so he ended up playing junior college baseball for two seasons at Okaloosa-Walton College in Niceville, Fla.

DiMichele said of Penn State's decision not to release him to pursue another Division I scholarship, "I can understand that.

"There are no hard feelings. What happened is in the past."

He remains in touch with Bradley, who recruited him.

"We've always had a good relationship," DiMichele said.

When DiMichele decided he wanted to get back into football, Bradley was one of the people he contacted.

"At the time, we didn't have any grants available for a quarterback, and that's what he wanted to play," Bradley said. "He asked, did I know of anybody else that may be interested and could (I) let people know he was thinking about coming back and playing football?"

DiMichele, whose brother, Alex, also plays football at Temple, has started seven of 10 games this season, completing 119 of 185 passes for 1,392 yards, 10 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He threw two touchdown passes Oct. 28 as Temple beat Bowling Green, 28-14, and ended a 20-game losing streak.

DiMichele had been picked in the 38th round of the 2005 Major League Baseball draft by Toronto, but he said that had been a draft-and-follow situation in which the team wanted to have his rights but not sign him immediately.

A pulled oblique muscle hampered DiMichele's college baseball career as an outfielder and pitcher. He intends to play baseball at Temple.

DiMichele once had dreamed of playing quarterback at Penn State. He gets to do that Saturday but wearing a Temple uniform. There are no regrets.

"None at all," he said. "I wouldn't rather be any other place than here right now."

Note: Penn State linebacker Paul Posluszny, who won the Butkus Award last year as the nation's best linebacker, is one of three finalists for 2006 announced yesterday. The others are Ohio State's James Laurinaitis and Mississippi's Patrick Willis.

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