Penn State was founded as a university back in 1855, and not long after, established an athletic program. Several of the programs that remain staples to this day were established in the 19th century and have rich histories full of every type of game imaginable.

Thankfully for us sports sickos, many of these games are at least partially documented, giving us a chance to scroll through deep archives to find some weird ones. Every sport has them, from football to soccer to hockey, so, inspired by the work a former staffer did a few years ago, I thought I’d go back into the deep history of Penn State athletics to try and find a strange final score or two for as many varsity sports as possible.

Some of these are odd, some are flat out strange, and others are simply hard to believe even happened. But they all did happen, even if fewer than 1,000 fans were there to see it live on a backfield over 100 years ago, and the only surviving information is stuck in little-read record books.

Football

Penn State 5, Carlisle Indians 18 (October 5, 1907): The weirdest scores in Penn State history are, probably, the highest scoring ones. Yet this game is one from ancient history that is low-scoring, but also hard to fathom. The easiest way to get to an 18-5 score in football is three touchdowns with no extra points, a field goal, and a safety, but we don’t know how these points were scored.

What else is notable about this game? This game was played at a neutral site in Williamsport, and the team that Penn State played, the Carlisle Indians, doesn’t exist anymore. It represented an indigenous boarding school from 1879 to 1918 and was one of college football’s premier teams during this time, coached by football pioneer Pop Warner and led by one of the greatest football players of all time, Jim Thorpe, who walked onto the team in 1907 and earned a starting spot.

Penn State 99, St. Bonaventure 0 (October 13, 1917): There have been bigger bloodbaths, both in victory and defeat, but the score of 99 stands out. Did the scoreboard not have room for three digits? Did they miss that many extra points? The newspaper from the game says that Penn State scored 15 touchdowns, including two where St. Bonaventure forgot the rules and didn’t touch a kickoff that bounced into the end zone. One time is a goof, twice, and you might have to check for point shaving. The best part? Penn State smoked Gettysburg, 80-0, the week prior. That’s 179 points in a span of eight days.

Penn State 4, Iowa 6 (October 23, 2004): For a modern game, this is the only one you could’ve gone to. If you’re a Penn State fan, you’ve read about this one many times, if you haven’t watched it yourself. The No. 25 Hawkeyes visited Beaver Stadium against a lowly Nittany Lions squad on a depressing, muggy day, and neither team had any offense.

A bad snap on a 4th and 5 on Iowa’s own 20 in the opening possession led to Iowa punter David Bradley kicking the ball through his own end zone for a safety. We then got back-to-back punts, a long return into field goal range for Penn State, a missed 51-yarder by future NFL kicker Robbie Gould, and a made 27-yarder by Kyle Schlichler to make it 3-2 Iowa after one quarter.

Punt, punt, Zack Mills interception, Iowa 27-yard field goal, punt, Iowa interception, Mills interception, punt, punt, punt, end of the first half. Penn State blocked a punt to set themselves up on the Iowa 9-yard line in the third quarter, but they had to settle for a field goal… and Gould missed a 25-yarder.

More punts, an Iowa fumble, another interception, and Iowa found themselves backed up inside their own 1-yard line again. Not wanting to risk another catastrophic punt, they took an intentional safety with eight minutes left, making it 6-4.

The gamble paid off. Michael Robinson, who relieved a struggling Mills earlier in the game, turned it over twice in the fourth after the intentional safety. Penn State quarterbacks combined to go 9-for-28 for 112 yards and four interceptions. It’s the ugliest game in modern college football history. Seven turnovers, 315 total yards, two missed field goals, two semi-intentional safeties, and 14 punts.

Men’s Basketball

Penn State 62, Juniata 1 (December 13, 1906): Excuse me? How is this even possible? This was before the shot clock, so low-scoring games absolutely exist, but one singular point? Penn State hoops was pretty good back then, but they only went 5-6 in 1906-07. There’s no data on this game, and that might be a good thing with how different the sport was back then, but my goodness.

Penn State 129, VMI 111 (December 30, 2006): 100 years later, Penn State allowed the most points in a game in program history… and won. This was a regulation game; these two teams combined to score 240 points in 40 minutes. Six points per minute in a basketball game is nuts.

VMI played an exceptionally fast, exceptionally dynamic offensive attack. Head coach Duggar Baucom brought back a relic of the 1980s to an era that was considerably slower and more isolation-based because his roster lacked a true center after multiple players were kicked off the team for honor code violations. As such, VMI broke NCAA records in multiple offensive counting stats, just due to sheer volume and pace.

As for the game itself, Penn State scored a program-record 129 points on the backs of two 60-point halves. Geary Claxton scored 31 on 12-for-18 from the field, while Jamelle Cornley and Brandon Hassell also scored 20+. Those three scored 76 points combined, more than most college basketball teams average in a game. If you were wondering, just five of the Nittany Lions’ 43 made baskets were three-pointers, and they only went 25-for-43 from the free-throw line.

Women’s Basketball

Penn State 119, St. Francis PA 43 (December 17, 2023): One of the more recent games on this list, few sports generate more jaw-dropping blowouts than women’s college basketball. The gap between the top, middle, and bottom in Division I is so cataclysmically large that you get scores like this happening daily in non-conference play. In December 2023, a Lady Lions team that went to the semifinals of the WBIT (in the best season of the now-fired Carolyn Kieger’s tenure) destroyed in-state foe St. Francis by a staggering 76 points.

St. Francis finished the season 5-25, so that’s not too surprising. It was a manageable 28-15 game after one quarter, but the lead ballooned to 67-24 at half, and the Lady Lions never stopped, holding St. Francis to 26.7% from the field and 5-for-27 from three, while forcing 23 turnovers. Leilani Kapinus led the way with 25 points, with Moriah Murray and Jayla Oden both scoring 18 off the bench. They outrebounded the Red Flash, 51-21.

Men’s Hockey

Penn State 3, Army 18 (February 26, 1944): Penn State did once have a varsity hockey team prior to the program’s Division I debut in 2012. From 1940-47, Penn State played 29 total games across five seasons with mixed results. The worst result was the team allowing 18 goals against Army in February 1944, which makes sense considering how Army was a powerhouse in all sports during World War II for obvious reasons. Again, no data for this game, but we know it happened. We do know Arthur Davis coached, Art Gladstone was captain, and that Frank Rainear, Charles Blair, and Richard Nelson had goals.

Penn State 11, Robert Morris 6 (November 10, 2018): The highest scoring game of the Guy Gadowsky era, there were 17 combined goals in this in-state clash. The Nittany Lions traveled to Neville Township for the second game of a home-and-home series and had nine different goal scorers. The Colonials once led 2-1 halfway through the first, but the game was tied at three at first intermission before Penn State broke it open with five in the second period.

Nikita Pavlychev and Kris Myllari both potted a pair of goals and joined Cole Hults, Alex Limoges, and Liam Folkes with three-point games. 16 skaters recorded a point in the fast-paced game, which saw 85 combined shots on goal, 35 combined penalty minutes, and four power play goals (three by Robert Morris). It set a franchise goals record that was only tied in February, when Penn State thrashed Ohio State, 11-4. and broke the Pegula Ice Arena goals record.

Baseball

Penn State 2, Ohio State 29 (May 8, 2005): Ouch. Before college baseball had a mercy rule, you occasionally got scores like these, even if they were a relative rarity in conference play. In the second game of a doubleheader at old Beaver Field (this was the final year before Medlar Field at Lubrano Park was built), the Buckeyes absolutely demolished the Nittany Lions in a score that, in MLB terms, has only come close to replicated once. Ohio State had eight eventual draftees and three who would play in the majors; Penn State had eight draftees but zero big leaguers.

Penn State 27, Michigan State 4 (May 1, 2021): A more recent game we have box scores for, Penn State wasn’t the most talented team in 2021 (they finished below .500), but they had five players drafted in June of that year, so they had enough offensive talent to beat the breaks off someone, which they did to poor Sparty in front of just 255 people in State College. This is somehow not the most runs in Penn State history, as they beat La Salle 28-1 in 1997.

It was 10-0 after one inning. It was 18-0 after three. With no mercy rule to stop it, Penn State led 27-2 after eight innings before two pity runs in the ninth. Only two home runs were hit (Jay Harry and Curtis Robison), as the Nittany Lions poured it on with 22 hits and 11 walks. Harry was a triple shy of the cycle with 6 RBIs, while Johnny Piacentino had a career day, going 5-for-6 with 5 RBIs. Conor Larkin allowed two runs in seven innings, picking up the win with a staggering amount of run support.

Softball

Penn State 26, Elizabethtown 1 (April 27, 1965): There are only four games listed for the program’s inaugural 1965 campaign. They lost two of them by reasonable scores, but the two wins? A 20-3 road win over Wilson College, and this bludgeoning, which acted as the first game in program history, survives as the largest victory in program history.

Penn State 20, SUNY-Cortland 23 (May 13, 1972): The previous edition of this list, back in 2021, had a recent, wild doubleheader that the softball team was involved in. Well, I got a dandy doubleheader from over 50 years ago. Penn State met current Division III SUNY-Cortland for a doubleheader to close the 1972 season. Despite softball games only being seven innings long, the two teams combined to score 65 runs in the two-game Cortland sweep. The second game had 43 of those runs.

Penn State 7, Wisconsin 8 (17) (April 27, 1997): This is the longest game in Penn State softball history, going to 10 different extra innings. Twice before has the baseball team gone to 17 innings, but that’s only slightly less impressive than this, given that a standard baseball game is two innings longer. The game took nearly five hours before the Badgers walked it off.

Soccer

Men’s: Penn State 9, Temple 0 (November 6, 1971): Scores don’t get too wild in soccer, but it’s extremely rare to see nine goals scored in a game. Herb Schmidt’s squad went 9-3-1 in 1971 and scored at least four goals on seven different occasions, including this blowout against Temple, which wasn’t some pushover at 6-5-2. This team made it to the NCAA quarterfinals before getting a taste of their own medicine, getting pummeled by Howard, 8-0, a month after this one in State College.

Women’s: Penn State 9, Bucknell 2 (September 25, 2001): Maybe the most impressive victory in Penn State women’s soccer history was hanging nine goals on an eventual NCAA Tournament team in September 2001. It was 5-0 just 15 minutes into the game, and 8-0 at halftime, with National Player of the Year Christie Welsh and Stephanie Pezzullo both potting a pair of goals. The two teams would rematch in the NCAA Second Round, with Penn State winning, 3-1. The Nittany Lions’ tremendous season would end with a quarterfinal loss to eventual champions North Carolina.

Lacrosse

Penn State 1, Western Maryland 0 (May 1, 1931): Sports evolve over the course of a century, but this was still an exceptionally low score for the time. One singular goal in the entire game, which was played on the road against a school now known as McDaniel College. This was not a high-scoring Nittany Lions team, as they’d be shut out 13-0 by Maryland the very next day in College Park.

Penn State 3, Navy 29 (April 11, 1959): The most lopsided defeat in men’s lacrosse history, the Midshipmen were one of two teams to beat the 5-4-1 Nittany Lions by at least 19 goals, as Maryland came to State College and beat them 20-1 a month later.

Women’s: Penn State 26, Rutgers 1 (April 9, 1988): This score has actually happened twice for the women’s team, as they defeated Frostburg State (now a Division II school) by the same margin 11 years earlier. This was the second game of a ridiculous two-game stretch, which saw the Nittany Lions outscore their opponents 45-2 in the midst of a tremendous season that saw them go 15-4 and ultimately make the NCAA Championship Game before losing to Temple.

Women’s Volleyball

Penn State-SE Louisiana (September 4, 1992): How do you find a weird score in volleyball? You have two options: you can go with sheer dominance or crazy long sets. There’s nothing too crazy with the long sets, so we picked two blowouts. In the 1992 season opener, Penn State hosted Southeastern Louisiana and swept them in as dominant a fashion as possible: 15-0, 15-0, 15-1. Was the third set a sympathy point? We may never know. Those Nittany Lions went 28-4 and were ultimately swept by Stanford in the NCAA Regionals.

Penn State-Binghamton (November 30, 2012): The 2012 edition of the Nittany Lions didn’t win a national championship, but they were still overwhelmingly dominant. So much so that they greeted their first opponent in that year’s NCAA Tournament with a brutal beatdown. Poor Binghamton only went 13-17, but earned the right to get beaten down at Rec Hall after winning the American East conference tournament. Penn State swept them by a combined score of 75-23 (25-11, 25-3, 25-9). That 25-3 set is the most dominant set for the women’s volleyball team since sets shifted to first-to-25 in 2008.

Wrestling

How do you define a wrestling score? Cael Sanderson has made Penn State wrestling so dominant that no dual meet score looks ridiculous. They have multiple 55-0 wins, something unfathomable to do to another Division I team. One of them was even against a Big Ten opponent last season!

Instead, we’ll use this opportunity to highlight one of the highest-scoring individual matches you’ll ever see that took place earlier this season.

No. 1 Shayne Van Ness 31, No. 7 Carter Young 15 (149 pounds, January 24, 2026): A matchup we could see again in the Big Ten Championships semifinal and in the NCAA Championships, Maryland’s Young got the first takedown and put Van Ness in a cradle, getting four back points.

The top-ranked 149-pounder narrowly kept his second shoulder off the mat to fight off a pin and eventually escaped. After trailing 7-1 after one period, he notched nine takedowns in the next two periods, eventually winning by tech fall. He needed a grand total of 3 minutes and 18 seconds to get those takedowns.