3 takeaways from Penn State basketball’s 72-61 loss to Rutgers
The Penn State men’s basketball team dropped its third game of the season Tuesday night when it lost to Rutgers 72-61. Let’s take a look at three key takeaways from the loss.
1. Penn State let Rutgers control the game
The Nittany Lions allowed Rutgers to dictate the flow of the game and it cost them in the end. Rutgers made life difficult for Penn State when it had the ball. The Scarlet Knights packed the paint and forced the Nittany Lions to make shots from the perimeter and they didn’t. They went 6-of-26 from beyond the arc, good for 23.1%. That’s well below the team’s average coming into the game of 31.7%. The Nittany Lions aren’t a strong shooting team, but they need to shoot better than they did Tuesday night, especially with how the game was officiated.
2. The conference’s officiating has too much of an impact on games
The Big Ten has allowed too much contact in games for a long time and that continued Tuesday night. The biggest problem with that is the inconsistency it creates in officiating. Officials don’t call everything they should and it creates too much ambiguity about what is a foul and what isn’t. Tuesday night it bore out in a negative way for Penn State. The Nittany Lions were called for 23 fouls while the Scarlet Knights were only called for 13 fouls. That kind of discrepancy can change the outcome of a game. Big Ten officials need to find consistency in what they’re calling to allow the players to decide the game. The officiating may not have changed the outcome of the game, but it had a large impact.
3. The Big Ten is going to be a grind
Rutgers is the third-lowest ranked team in the Big Ten in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. Penn State is the No. 21 team in the country in the same rankings. Yet, going into the game, the Nittany Lions were projected to lose. The loss is a tough one to take because of how it happened, but there’s no shame in losing to the Scarlet Knights. The biggest issue facing Penn State is just how strong the rest of the conference is. There are only two teams in the conference outside KenPom’s top 50. That means 11 of the top 50 teams in the country are all in the same conference. Very few games are going to come easy for the Nittany Lions the rest of the way, especially on the road. Any wins on the road in conference play should be seen as a cherry on top rather than a necessity.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 9:46 PM.
