The story of Penn State men’s basketball is paved with games like the one the Nittany Lions lost on Sunday night, officially a 76-64 defeat to Ohio State.
It was close – enough – most of the first half, the Nittany Lions responding to a 5-0 start by the visiting Buckeyes with a 12-0 run of their own. Penn State put together the prototypical start to many a game featuring an upset-hopeful home team. The Buckeyes coming off a win over No. 1 Duke, Penn State looking to improve to 5-3 on the year.
But the fact of the matter is Ohio State was simply better. The Buckeyes made more shots, landed more counterpunches and were the most consistent team for nearly the entire night. As a result it was Ohio State ahead 41-30 at the half, a game that felt closer than the score and yet also very much an 11-point game and all that entails.
It’s in this where longtime observers have seen Sunday’s story before. Ohio State pushed ahead by as many as 18 in the second half, the crowd sticking around because there were nearly 14 minutes to go and they were waiting (or hoping) for that moment.
And it happened, like it has so many times before, Penn State turning that 18 points deficit into a smaller and smaller margin. The crowd roared with approval, and exploded as Penn State got the game within single-digits with 5:06 to go and then just six points with 2:39 to play.
“I mean, it’s the nature of the business that I work in right now,” Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry said after the game. “It’s the unpredictability of 18 to 22 year olds. And like some nights you watch a team play and they’ll be fantastic. You watch them the next night and there’ll be awful. You can see the same thing during a game from minute to minute, from half to half or maybe a timeout. That’s something we talked about – 40 minutes of focus more than anything – you have to be focused on a game plan. You have to be focused on your job.”
Not to state the obvious, but there are only two results to a basketball game in 2021, and in moments like this, only two things that can happen; the comeback can be completed, or the opponent responds.
Ohio State choose the second option, firing a timely soul-crushing three on the ensuing possession to put the Buckeyes ahead by nine and Penn State never got its mojo back.
From 40,000 feet these are the kinds of game Shrewsberry is looking to flip for his program. The Nittany Lions have long been lurking on the edge of games, long on receiving end of comebacks turned heartbreak. Anyone who has watched Penn State basketball for any length of time knows that these games can go both ways – some of Penn State’s biggest wins have been comebacks – but onlookers also know of countless times those comebacks have fallen short.
The question at-large is how you erase the need for a comeback in the first place. Ohio State simply made shots and on more than a few occasions – contested ones. Basketball in its most basic form is not that much more difficult that taking shots, and hoping to make them. Do that, and you’ll win a lot of games. It’s not that hard, but also it kind of is.
“Our guys made some shots. And as simple as that,” Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann said. “I mean, I’m not saying it just boiled down to that. I thought we were able to get some stops when we needed to.”
It’s hard to know what to expect out of Penn State this year. The Nittany Lions are in transition between a new and old era, a roster of guns-for-hire coupled with a handful of Pat Chambers era veterans. Shrewsberry’s charge is to win now, but also to avoid a major regression. He is not one for moral victories, but the fact the Nittany Lions took on their first Big Ten opponent and managed to not look totally out of sorts or a decade behind where they last were is a small victory in and of itself.
Shrewsberry may never admit it, but victory in 2021 is making sure it doesn’t look like 2012. Do that and the program has a chance to pick up where it left off with Chambers sooner rather than later.
“We’re gonna come back tomorrow – we’ll watch film,” Shrewsberry said. “We’re gonna learn from this one and get better. Then we play a good team on Wednesday. And then we’re gonna get right back at it and watch film and get better and then we’re gonna go to Michigan State and we are going to fight every night. No questions asked. And when you lay it all out there like that. You can live with the results. If we’re not putting everything we got into our preparation on the court, you don’t feel good and I can’t feel good about the results. Like I don’t feel good that we didn’t put 40 minutes together but how we fought in the second half. I can live with the result if we play like that the entire time.”
