It's a script we've come to know all too well. Penn State comes out looking completely inept and falls behind early. The other team falls asleep. Penn State claws back to tie the game, and then they just can't get over the hump. The other team realizes it's time to come to life, and they close out the game on a 19-8 run to win comfortably.
The loss makes 12 in a row for the Nittany Lions, who are still looking for their first win in Big Ten play. With six games to go, it appears Penn State is destined for a last place finish. With two games against Northwestern and a road game against Michigan, maybe they can still get a win or two to prevent being a historically bad team. It all depends on how bad these players want to avoid being on the wrong side of history.
The Good
Only six more games to go? Just a few weeks until spring practice? I don't own a gun?
Talor Battle had 30 points to go with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. He's the lone bright spot in this grueling season. It would be great to see him win Big Ten Player of the Year. He certainly deserves it considering he could have packed it in a month ago and nobody would have blamed him.
The team actually didn't play terrible today outside of the last 12 minutes where they kept turning the ball over and taking bad shots.
The Bad
Penn State got outrebounded 32-23. Usually Penn State wins this battle. It's hard enough to win a game when they do.
While Talor Battle had 30 points, the rest of the team had 24. That's not going to get it done, boys. Somebody else has to step up. That's just if we want to get lucky and win a game or two. If we want to be consistently good, we need two or three guys to step up and score consistently.
The Ugly
There was that moment there in the second half when David Jackson hit the three point shot to take the lead that you though, "Wow. Maybe they can do this." But then the wheels came off the struggle bus. Andrew Ott and Talor Battle had turnovers. Ott didn't take an open shot resulting in a shot clock violation. Battle took a crazy shot after an ill-advised drive into the lane. Tim Frazier drove to the hoop and threw up a prayer instead of setting up the offense. It's the same story game in and game out. By the time they stopped the bleeding they were down by double digits with just a few minutes to go.
Next Up
Penn State gets their next chance at a win on Wednesday at 8:30 PM when they go to Northwestern. The Wildcats are 16-8 overall and 5-7 in the Big Ten.