Penn State Advances - Purdue Awaits
by BSD on Mar 12, 2009 9:59 PM EDT
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Well that went about as well as could be expected. Penn State jumped out to an early lead against the Indiana Hoosiers, and then they put their foot on the back of their neck and didn't let them get up. Penn State held a comfortable 25 point lead late in the game allowing Battle and Cornley to watch the last eight minutes from the bench.
The Good
Penn State didn't have to expend a ton of effort in this game. Pringle logged the most minutes with 31. Cornley played 30 and Battle had 29. This will help us tremendously against Purdue.
Cornley was a beast scoring 22 points. He had it going inside and outside. Pringle added 16 points and Jackson even chipped in 10 points to go with five rebounds. It was probably DJ's best game of the year and it couldn't come at a better time. The way Penn State was scoring with different weapons should give Purdue a lot to think about. Even Jeff Brooks scored six points.
The Bad
Talor Battle left the court for several minutes in the first half to get a twisted ankle taped up. Hopefully he's ok, but it's good to see the offense didn't fall apart with him not on the court.
The Ugly
Penn State looked terrible after Battle and Cornley left the game for good going about seven minutes without a score. I know the game was over at that point, but geeze. It's Indiana. Our bench should have been able to score some points there.
So are we in?
The general consensus is yes, we're in at this point. We got some help with Louisville beating Providence, Texas beating Kansas State, Duquesne beating Rhode Island, and Arizona State beating Arizona. But Penn State can't let up now. A win over Purdue should make us a lock, and the only way we can be sure of making the tournament would be to sweep our way through the weekend.
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I wonder
Stanley is a great player but he’s not a true PG so running the offense through him may not be ideal. That’s just a theory on why the team looked so messed up towards the end of the game. Plus that’s a pretty odd lineup and I don’t know if they’ve seen it all year.
Kath?
I totally agree
about Brooks. I’m hoping that he can work on his shot next year…it seems like everything he puts up is a line drive. I would be happy with him concentrating on staying down low and getting rebounds and putbacks and not hoisting up all the 3 pointers that he does…there’s a reason that they leave him wide open.
by mundyscorner99 on Mar 12, 2009 11:00 PM EDT up reply actions
0 confidence
I like Jeff a lot, he’s really talented, has good size, and you could tell he really tries and wants to help the team out. While all those traits are great to have, his problem is that he’s playing with no confidence. I don’t know what it’ s going to take (get more one on one practice time? a Tony Robbins speech?) but the kid needs something to his confidence up. I like how he plays with a lot of heart, and if he does get a little bit of confidence, he could be a nice player
case in point:
his 2 foul shots at the end of the game. Just reading his facial expressions, “Oh God, why did I have to get fouled instead of letting me get the easy layup?” It was seriously like watching Shaq at the foul line
yeah
he gets down on himself very easily. I don’t know if that can be fixed this season so hopefully he can contribute in other ways besides scoring tomorrow and (hopefully) beyond.
by mundyscorner99 on Mar 12, 2009 11:18 PM EDT up reply actions
I liked how Ed played the other guys late
gave them added experience/confidence, and more importantly rested our starters. Even though our lead started to slip, I’d rather have the other guys fresh for the next game (and possibly the one after that)
It couldn't have worked out much better
Get a big lead early, get the starters out of there, and get some valuable minutes for the reserves. It’s been such a long time that we’ve had a blowout (besides Michigan at home, I think that is the only B10 game) to be able to play some other guys. That rest for the starters will hopefully come up huge tomorrow. I still feel that we need to beat Purdue to get in…not they shouldn’t be in already…but I cringe every time I hear people talk about the non conference schedule.
by mundyscorner99 on Mar 12, 2009 11:05 PM EDT reply actions
Screw the Big Ten! They don’t play pretty, so they all suck!
by ReadingRambler on Mar 12, 2009 11:35 PM EDT up reply actions
best paragraph
The Big Ten has just one true national title contender: Michigan State. And it remains to be seen whether any of the other Big Ten teams are strong enough to survive even the tournament’s first weekend. But the résumés for several Big Ten teams — including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Penn State — are similarly mediocre, a tad stronger than those of other bubble teams.
OK so we’ve got teams like Alcorn State in the mix every year, but the Big Ten gets crap for only having one title contender? A team that we beat no less on their home court? A team that needed 8 guys (3 refs) to beat us at home? Ha.
And of course “it remains to be seen” if most of our middle of the pack teams will make it past the first weekend, since the national tourney hasn’t come around yet.
And if we’re a tad stronger than other bubble teams, doesn’t that mean we get in first?
And similarly mediocre to what?
It's amazing
Amazing how John Feinstein can watch all that college basketball with his nose so high in the air.
"Never. We would never shoot nuclear weapons at Decepticons." -- Gen. Jack Jacobs
by Run Up The Score on Mar 13, 2009 8:42 AM EDT up reply actions
Funny
I called into that garage show KDKA runs on the CW at 10:35 (Pittsburgh area) to comment on the fact that I was “looking forward to watching Penn State, Duquesne, and WVU playing with the Pitt hype machine shut down for the weekend”. Suspiciously (sarcasm), I didn’t get that far. Before I could even get the fact that they left Penn State out of their highlight real, I got cut off. They claim they “lost” me. Yeeea. Ok. Sleep well Pittsburgh.
God Created the World Out Of Nothing, Paterno Built A National Superpower On Cow Fields...
by Adam Bittner on Mar 12, 2009 11:43 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
hahahaha
I tried calling in to that show before and they didn’t take my call either. They absolutely love Pitt on that show, but it’s funny how Duq, Penn State, WVU and RMU are having great weeks, while Pitt isn’t
There’s no argument that the Big Ten may have only one team that can reasonably contend for the title. Let’s just have the media appoint two teams that were ranked high at the beginning of the season, have a strong program tradition, large ticket buying fan base, and lost least recently, and pit them in a primetime Monday night game in early April. It seems to work just fine for football.
The fun of the NCAA tournament isn’t seeing the likely outcome of the 4 #1 seeds making the final four.
It’s the little things, like seeing Duke and Pitt get knocked out early. It’s seeing the heartbreak of the entitled athletes from proud programs who lose to a team from Eastern Bumfuck State. It’s having a fun playoff that knocks out 75% of teams in a span of 4 days. It’s that kid from Gonzaga with the 14-year old mustache and curly hair in tears after his team loses to someone they were “supposed to beat.” It’s seeing the rare opportunity for a Davidson or George Mason to go to the Final Four. And, if all goes well, it’s the chance for Penn State to make a little noise and get some talented high school basketball player who never would have considered playing here think about visiting Happy Valley.
Are you shitting me?
The Big Ten doesn’t even have one National Title contender. You willing to give me odds that Michigan State makes it out of the Sweet 16? Are you willing to give me odds that any Big Ten team makes it out of the sweet 16? One or two probably will, but this is not a very strong league. But which one is gonna depend on the draw.
It’s a deep league (in that there is not a lot of seperation between 1 and 7), but not a very strong one.
"I honestly think the "Spread HD" is going to work pretty well, and we’ll be just fine this year". - 8-27-2008
I would love to see a "serious" writeup like this (regarding the MNC game)
Everyone always just says that football should have a playoff, pointing out how every other sport and every other level of football is able to have a successful playoff, but I don’t think I’ve seen too many stories/analyses saying that they should get rid of the playoff in favor of matching the 2 “best” teams up in a game.
by The JuggerNitt on Mar 13, 2009 9:10 AM EDT up reply actions
Another good bubble game for us.
New Mexico lost to Wyoming, knocking them out. Most experts had New Mexico in, so this was a pretty stunning upset.
Bracketology 101 says if any BigTen team is left out...it's PSU
In the Big Ten…
We never like the admit we were wrong, but it looks like we have no choice in this one. We finally were forced to cave and put eight Big Ten teams in the field. Minnesota, Michigan, and Penn State all won easily to move onto the Big Ten quarters and all eight teams left in the Big Ten field look like they will be dancing. If we had to pick one team that would miss out on the dance at this point we would have to say Penn State. Their RPI is 25-30 points lower than the rest of the bubble teams and if they were to get blown out by Purdue it would not be unthinkable for the Nittany Lions to be left out.
I bleed Blue and White.
He's right.
We don’t have to like it, but…
"Never. We would never shoot nuclear weapons at Decepticons." -- Gen. Jack Jacobs
by Run Up The Score on Mar 13, 2009 9:28 AM EDT up reply actions
I love the comments
People really really hate the Big Ten. I like the how the one poster uses the Big Ten’s bowl record in their argument about why we don’t deserve 8 teams in the tournament.
8 teams would mean...
- Michigan State
- Illinois
- Purdue
- Wisconsin
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- Michigan
- Northwestern
Northwestern lost in the first round of the B10 tournament… I think they’re out before us.
Arizona over PSU
There was a fairly interesting debate last night on one of the wrap up shows about how everyone now assumes Arizona is out, but when stacked head to head against PSU the fact that they are Arizona (a traditional basketball powerhouse) may ultimately sway the decision makers.
I agree 100% with Cornley’s post game discussion with the ever beautiful Erin Andrews…the only way to guarantee us a spot is to win out. (don’t get me wrong if we beat Purdue and still get left out it would be ridiculous, but given our horrific out of confernece and lower RPI its not unthinkalbe).
We are not normal. We are legends.
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