Penn State Basketball Home Game vs. Minnesota Rescheduled to February 17th

We now have a make-up date for the home contest against Minnesota that was originally to have been played on January 19th, but was postponed due to a COVID outbreak on the Minnesota team, per Penn State’s official Twitter page:

That is not a typo in the graphic, btw. The game will indeed tip off at 4:00 PM ET on Thursday, February 17th. It will be the first of a doubleheader of Penn State hoops games with the women’s team hosting Nebraska at 7:00 PM ET that evening. The game will also happen a mere five days after the Nittany Lions visit Minnesota on February 12th, and will start less than 48 hours after completing a home game against Michigan State on February 15th.

As Marty pointed out in his random observations in our Indiana recap: The postponement of the Minnesota game really seemed to blunt momentum, as instead of potentially coming off a win at home over the Gophers sandwiched in between blowout losses on the road to Iowa and Indiana, they are now riding a three-game losing skid with a rematch at home against Iowa on the horizon this coming Monday night.

The schedule doesn’t get any easier after Monday’s rematch with the Hawkeyes, as the team must travel to Wisconsin next Saturday to take on a Badgers team that is clicking on all cylinders, followed by a home date with a Michigan team starting to find itself again, followed by a road trip to Minnesota on Saturday February 12th, and then coming home to face Sparty just two days before the re-scheduled home game with Minnesota. Given the unusual tipoff time (late afternoon on a school/work day) plus the very short turnaround time from the previous game, it will be a taller task than it otherwise may have been had the game been played at its original date/time.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see this game officially rescheduled, as it gives Micah Shrewsberry’s team one of its better chances to earn an additional Big Ten win and perhaps re-capture some momentum, given that the few games following this one are all against fellow opponents in the bottom tier of the Big Ten standings with a road trip to Maryland, a home rematch against Northwestern, and a home game against Nebraska.