Penn State men’s basketball rolled past Maryland 85-69 on Sunday night to finish off the regular season in convincing fashion. In many respects this wasn’t a game worth an intimate dissection as the Nittany Lions played well in the first half, survived a late Maryland surge and still took a modest 36-32 lead into halftime.
In the final 20 minutes of play, Penn State shot 60% from the field, operated like a team on a week’s worth of rest and buried a Maryland squad which has struggled on the offensive end all year long. Penn State won the rebounding battle, going +21, a remarkable feat for a team which has spent most of the year struggling in that area.
All told, Penn State simply played a more confident brand of basketball over the course of the entire evening and reaped the benefits in the process. Many a coach would be happy to see his team playing their best basketball at the end of the year, and while Mike Rhoades and company are only a week removed from a massive collapse against Minnesota, it’s hard to argue that the Nittany Lions haven’t gotten better as the year has gone along.
In the box score Qudus Wahab continue his strong season with a team-high 19 points and 15 rebounds while Ace Baldwin Jr. managed 17 points and 11 assists. Nick Kern added 10 points, Puff Johnson 13 and a late season surge by RayQuawndis Mitchell continued as he added 14 points to his totals. Like most teams, the Nittany Lions benefited from balanced scoring and active rebounding, a reminder that the game is, in theory, no harder than tackling the basics.
Penn State will now face Michigan in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament on Wednesday in Minneapolis. The Nittany Lions will enjoy the benefits of their postseason fate being something along the lines of a pre-established “something other than the NCAA Tournament.” Whether or not Rhoades and Penn State’s administration opt to accept a bid to whatever is next remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the Nittany Lions sit at 15-16 on the year with nine wins in conference play and very few qualms with how the year has gone in the face of plenty of unorthodox challenges.
And that’s maybe the story to take away from Penn State’s season at-large so far. Given the facts — a new roster, a new coaching staff, the willing dismissal of the team’s leading scorer, all while playing in a challenging league — Penn State came out looking pretty good. Often times, the measure of the program’s success is its ceiling, but in truth it might be best judged by how far its basement has risen. If Penn State’s worst years are doomed to be “just a few winnable games away from the tournament,” then there is something to be said for that progress.
That’s not to say Rhoades won’t have to prove his mettle in the years to come, but he has given fans plenty of reason to hope for the future. The Penn State men’s basketball curse in a nutshell, the perpetual optimism of “next year.”
