“We didn’t panic,” Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry said on Monday night following the Nittany Lions’ third win of the season, an 85-74 grind-it-out victory over Cornell.
The moment of potential panic came as Penn State fell behind 27-17 midway through the first half. Cornell was making shots, grabbing second-chance points and simply looking like the better team.
But while the Nittany Lions might be a roster of new faces still getting to know their collective idiosyncrasies, they’re also one of the most experienced teams in the country. The concept of ‘team’ is still a work in progress only four games into the season together, but the Nittany Lions in the singular have seen a ton of basketball. In total 11 players on Penn State’s roster are juniors or older – which means when the going gets tough, it’s not their first rodeo.
It’s just their first rodeo together.
And Monday evening they held on for the ride, turning a 10-point deficit into 41-38 halftime margin, a 24-11 run by the Nittany Lions turning the game on its head, thanks in large part to guard Sam Sessoms who would make four shots from beyond the arc in the final 2:41 of the opening half.
By the night’s end Sessoms would make a total of six shots from deep, an unexpected contribution from the usually reliable finisher around the rim. Prior to Monday night’s performance, Sessoms had made just three shots from deep over the previous 15 games.
As Shrewsberry noted, it made for a bit of unusual sight in the box score.
“Like seeing Bigfoot at the mall,” Shrewsberry said with a laugh.
“Sometimes my teammates are mad because I’m passing up open looks,” Sessoms added, noting that momentum and confidence contributed to his performance.
The eventual result aside, Penn State was far from perfect on Monday night giving up 21 second-chance points and 13 offensive rebounds despite effectively coming out even on the glass by the night’s end. The Nittany Lions racked up 45 of their 85 points from the duo of Sessoms [22 points] and Seth Lundy [23 points] who added five of his own makes from three. Myles Dread continued to struggle from the field scoring just five points on 1-for-6 shooting but Jalen Pickett picked up the slack with 15 points, his highest total yet as a Nittany Lion.
John Harrar added 12 rebounds to his season total to go with seven points. Harrar has now recorded double-digits rebounds in all four of Penn State’s game so far this season.
In spite of all the good to end the first half, Penn State still found itself trailing by four midway through the second – it was then when the Nittany Lions leaned on their experience and growing cohesion on both ends of the floor. On defense Penn State would give up just two baskets in the final 9:22 of regulation while on the offensive end score on five of its final nine shots from the field. The result was a game-winning 24-9 run.
In turn for the second time on Monday night a deficit turned into a lead, this time for good.
“We settled in to what we needed to do,” Shrewsberry said. “We started getting better shots and then we started getting stops – we don’t want to play off of our offense. We want to play through our defense. I felt like our defense [sparked us] when we needed it.”
That offense didn’t hurt either, 15 made three tying a program record.
“We feel like we can do even better than that, we had a couple guys shoot really bad tonight,” Pickett said with a laugh.
