Penn State dropped its fourth-straight game on Saturday falling 76-67 to Bucknell after shooting poorly from the field and failing to get crucial stops down the stretch. Penn State lead by six at the half but couldn’t overcome 13 lead changes against a Bison team that came into the day 2-7 on the season. Here are five takeaway from Saturday’s game ahead of a two-game stretch of Big Ten play.
Deep Ball: Penn State continues to struggle with the three-pointer and that was no different on Saturday as the Nittany Lions went 4-for-19 from beyond the arc. It marks the fourth time this season Penn State has show sub 30% from deep during a season that the Nittany Lions have yet to top their season-opening clip of 37.5% against Delaware State. It’s hard to know who Penn State will be able to turn the corner with on this front aside from Jameel Brown who is 11-for-18 from range so far this season. Beyond that Penn State doesn’t have a three-point shooter who is averaging meaningful minutes shooting more than 30% from the field. The Nittany Lions don’t have the size on the interior to make up for that. As an aside, Brown was listed as ‘out’ on the Big Ten’s availability report Saturday.
Points Off Turnovers: Penn State had a modest 12 turnovers on Saturday but gave up 18 points off of them. Couple that with the fact Bucknell was credited with 10 steals and Penn State had an issue not only hanging onto the ball when Kanye Clary wasn’t on the floor, but not giving up points immediately after those turnovers. Bucknell didn’t do a ton better than Penn State on Saturday, but in a game that doesn’t feature great shooting or high scoring, it only takes a few mistakes to change a game. That’s how it went from a tie to a six-point Bucknell lead in just about two minutes towards the end of regulation.
Clary Back: After some fear that Kanye Clary might miss some time with a hand injury, Clary was cleared to play but didn’t quite have his usual stuff against the Bison. Clary finished with four points in 29 minutes of play but did make up for his lacking production scoring with six assists to just one turnover. Clary might not be 100% just yet but if the Nittany Lions are going to steal one in the coming days against Maryland or Ohio State, they’ll need him closer to his usual self than this. Clary is leading Penn State in scoring at a 15.1 point per game clip.
Ace It: Ace Baldwin continues to do a little bit of everything this season from scoring (17 points on Saturday) to generating four steals against Bucknell to go with three assists and a perfect 7-for-7 clip from the line. If Penn State isn’t going to make threes on a regular basis it’ll need to find its scoring the old fashion way and Baldwin is a good place to start looking for those hard-earned fouls. If he can find his stroke from deep, it’ll change everything about his game.
Q School: Big man Qudus Wahab gave Penn State some options on the interior Saturday scoring a team-high 18 points on 7-for-8 shooting to go along with eight rebounds and two assists. Penn State will hope that Favour Aire can eventually return from injury to help Penn State on the interior but for now Wahab continues to be a fairly solid option down low. He’s not going to win every battle, but Penn State needs him to keep trying, and he did just that Saturday.
