Without Myreon Jones, Penn State basketball’s Lamar Stevens steps up to deliver career-high performance
Lamar Stevens has become a more all-around player this season. The senior forward is scoring 16.9 points per game after averaging 19.9 last year and he’s engaged on every possession defensively.
But on Saturday, he had to go back to the Lamar Stevens of 2018-2019: A go-to scorer who can strike fear into his opponents with his ability to knock down open shots and attack the rim and finish with ease.
And that’s exactly what he did.
Stevens scored a career-high 33 points in Penn State’s 83-77 win over the Minnesota Golden Gophers to lead the Nittany Lions to their 18th victory in 23 games.
He’s adapted to whatever his team needs throughout the season. And on Saturday evening, that was a scorer.
Penn State was without sophomore guard Myreon Jones, who missed the game with an illness. Jones is the team’s second-leading scorer with 14.1 points per game and is a crucial piece of the team’s offense.
Without Jones, Stevens stepped up to make up for the sophomore guard’s usual scoring output, and then some. The duo entered the game averaging 31 combined points per contest, two fewer than Stevens managed against Minnesota.
The senior forward didn’t change his mentality when he found out Jones would be absent from the court. He did what he always does.
Whatever it takes to win.
“My mindset is just whatever it takes to win,” Stevens said after the win. “I was going to get the feel of the game. If I had to score, I was going to score. If I had to get stops, I was going to try to get stops. That was my main focus. I didn’t come into the game (thinking) I had to score because (Jones) isn’t here, but it was more so — and (this) is how everybody was — to do whatever it takes to win.”
That’s par for the course for this Penn State team. It has more depth than it ever has under head coach Pat Chambers and that’s allowed Stevens to become amorphous, shifting his role based on whatever the team needs on any given night. His scoring instincts took over Saturday night without Jones on the floor, even if he didn’t go in thinking he had to score.
His dominance on offense ran from buzzer to buzzer with 17 points coming in the first half and 16 coming in the second half. It wasn’t concentrated to one particular area on the court either. He scored nine of his points from the free throw line, six from beyond the arc, and 18 from 2-point range. Of those 18, 10 came at the rim and eight came on jumpers.
Stevens couldn’t have distributed his scoring more evenly if he tried and it kept Minnesota off balance all game. His versatility on offense was impossible for Minnesota to handle and made life difficult for Golden Gophers’ head coach Richard Pitino.
“We didn’t guard Lamar too well,” Pitino said. “He’s obviously getting better and he’s having a great year. He’s going to take his team to the NCAA Tournament. You can tell the team is rallying around that.”
In defense of Pitino, there probably wasn’t much the Golden Gophers could have done to stop Stevens.
Take away his jumper, and he attacks the rim.
Back off and prevent easy points near the hoop and he hits shots in your face.
There isn’t much teams can do to guard the senior forward on a usual night, but when he’s making 3-pointers like he did Saturday, hitting 2-of-4, then it’s a lost cause.
Penn State head coach Pat Chambers said he noticed Stevens go into attack mode without Jones on the court.
“Lamar had that look in his eyes that a senior gets when he knows ... that you’re running out of games,” Chambers said. “And we’ve got to keep winning. And if you want to find success this is what we need to do.”
Stevens was dominant on the court and had a profound impact in the game’s outcome. And he did it all in front of a sold-out crowd of 15,261, most with their eyes set on him.
Students were wearing Lamar Stevens No. 11 T-shirts that were handed out at the entrance to honor Stevens becoming Penn State’s third-all-time scorer. And fans were holding copies of “Lamar’s Climb — A Journey to Happy Valley,” a children’s book he’d written with illustrations by local adults and children with Down syndrome, released as part of Penn State’s “Everyone is Awesome” day.
Yet, he wasn’t phased. He continued to dominate even with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“To do it here, with his book, there’s a lot on this kid’s shoulders,” Chambers said. “For him to step up without (Jones) being there, it’s got to be one of his top games of his career.”
Stevens may not have to be a hero for Penn State every night, but he was on Saturday.
In more ways than one.
This story was originally published February 8, 2020 at 9:54 PM.
