To even begin to fathom what is going through the head of Patrick Chambers as he watches his Penn State team start so many games as if they’d never gone to sleep the night before, you have to understand the sort of guy that Chambers is.
When you practice and preach energy and attitude and hustle and drive, watching a group of players you work with every day fail to deliver any of those things has to, well, fry a few circuits.
“I don’t understand how you can come out flat or not ready to play or no energy,” Chambers said earlier this week. “It just blows my mind.”
Chambers said this Monday afternoon, two days after the Nittany Lions had fallen into a 31-10 hole in what would become a 77-64 loss at Iowa, and two days before they would fall into a 25-8 hole in what would become a 77-57 loss at Michigan State.
The slow starts are to blame for the margins of the losses, but the root cause of the losses themselves has been Penn State’s remarkably consistent ability to shoot the ball anywhere but through the basket.
Heading into Thursday’s games, the Big Ten’s 12 teams had collectively shot 45 percent from the field this season. Eleven of them were shooting at least 43 percent. Checking in at No. 12, at 38 percent, were the Nittany Lions, who have shot better than 40 percent only four times in 12 conference games. Not surprisingly, their field-goal percentage in conference games (.372) is even worse.
Penn State is also the Big Ten’s worst 3-point shooting team (.308 percent overall, .298 in conference play). But of the nine players currently in the rotation, five are taking at least 44 percent of their field-goal attempts from behind the arc. The Nittany Lions’ only reliable scoring threat in the paint is their only reliable scoring threat from anywhere — 6-foot-1 point guard Tim Frazier, who finds cracks in defenses with quickness and savvy. His teammates, rarely able to create their own shots against Big Ten defenses, rely on Frazier to get them the ball in positions to shoot. Too often, that’s been a long way from the basket, and the long misses on those 3-point tries have led to points in transition for the opponent and have helped build some of those wide, early-game margins.
One of the reasons this recent 1-8 skid has been so maddening for Chambers — and, undoubtedly, his players themselves — is that the Nittany Lions showed what happens when hustle and scrap meet effective shooting in early January. The result was a 20-point win over a Purdue team that’s fallen on relatively harder times this season, but has three Big Ten road wins and nearly clipped Ohio State in Columbus on Tuesday.
Penn State shot 44 percent from the field in that game, a figure that hardly screams “offensive juggernaut” but qualifies as red-hot when compared to most of the shooting percentages it has compiled this season. More importantly, it used gritty, aggressive defense and unselfish offensive play, which is what Chambers wants to see from his squad whether it’s shooting 30 percent or 60 percent.
The good news for Chambers and his team is that most of the worst shooting performances — and the ugliest starts — have come on the road, and the Nittany Lions will play four of their final six regular-season games at home, beginning with Saturday’s 1 p.m. contest against Nebraska in the Bryce Jordan Center.
The bad news is that it’s unlikely that a group of shooters that has been so frequently off the mark this winter will suddenly catch fire during the final third of the Big Ten season.
The task for Chambers is to do what he promised to do when he took the job and what he has done, for the most part, this season — get his team to play hard and with confidence each night, so that when the shots finally do fall, Penn State is in position to take advantage.
“They need to continue to believe that we can get better as individuals and collectively,” Chambers said.
Their coach believes so, even if a few other things might have gone through his head on recent game nights.
Philly standout commits to Lions
Penn State picked up an impressive commitment for the Class of 2013 Thursday night.
Brandon Austin, a 6-foot-7 guard/forward from Imhotep Charter in Philadelphia, announced that he had committed to the Nittany Lions via his Twitter page.
Austin, who is in his junior season, had offers from several Big East schools, including Syracuse, Georgetown, Villanova and Miami (Fla.).
As a sophomore, Austin helped lead Imhotep to a PIAA Class AA state championship last season, scoring 10 points in a win over Greensburg Central Catholic in the Bryce Jordan Center. He joins Pittsburgh point guard Geno Thorpe, who committed in November, in Penn State's Class of 2013.
Jeff Rice covers Penn State men's basketball for the Centre Daily Times. He can be reached at 231-4609 or jrice@centredaily.com.
