3rd-quarter woes continue to plague Penn State women’s basketball in 11th straight loss
Penn State was playing its best basketball of the season.
The Lady Lions were shooting 61 percent from the field, nearly three times their season average, almost totaled their game average for assists in a half and had 14 points from the bench.
But then the third quarter ensued.
Penn State once again had a third-quarter meltdown and fell to No. 10 Maryland 106-69 on senior day in the Bryce Jordan Center. The Lady Lions have now lost 11 straight games.
The Lady Lions were outscored by 21 points in the third frame, something that isn’t new this season.
“We keep talking about it, we keep addressing it, we keep talking about being fighters, we keep talking about culture and at the end of the day right now, Maryland is the No. 1 Big Ten team in the country and the only way you are going to beat them as an underdog is to fight,” coach Carolyn Kieger said.
In the first half Penn State certainly fought, and Kieger was more than pleased with what her team was able to accomplish.
“I thought we did a great job with the ball not sticking,” Kieger said. “We shared the basketball, time per touch was better than in the second half, the ball didn’t stick in one player’s hands, we set each other up, we made the right pass, we were attacking downhill, I thought our spacing was great.”
But once again, the third quarter is where Penn State struggled and looked like a team in the midst of a rebuild, one that is at the bottom of the Big Ten.
In Penn State’s 15 Big Ten games this season, the Lady Lions have only held a positive point margin in the third quarter twice, the most recent coming on Jan. 4 against Wisconsin.
The Lady Lions have been outscored by an average of 7.3 points in the third quarter of Big Ten games this season.
“I think personally just staying more composed,” senior Siyeh Frazier said about what her team could do to avoid these types of performances in the third quarter. “Just stay more composed at the beginning of the half and just following the game plan that coach set up for us and sticking to it.”
And for Kieger, it is all about the mentality of her team.
“We gave ourselves an opportunity to play with them and in the second half when we take a punch and we fold and we give up that’s obviously never going to work, especially when you are the underdog,” Kieger said.
The Lady Lions shot just 21.4 percent in the third quarter, an astounding drop from the 61 percent in the first half.
In the first half, Penn State was moving the ball, making the extra pass and finding the open teammate
Penn State also had five turnovers in the quarter, something that was a problem all game as the Lady Lions finished with a total of 22 turnovers.
The Lady Lions also struggled throughout the game on the defensive end of the court, allowing 106 total points, as it was the first time since the 2017-18 season that Penn State allowed more than 100 points in a game.
At the end of the day for Kieger, however, Penn State competed with the best team in the Big Ten for a half. It shows potential, it tells her that her team has the ability. But it is still searching for how to put all the pieces together, even with just three regular season games remaining.
“We keep showing it, we keep teaching it, we keep putting ourselves in a position in practice to work on that — to fail and keep pushing — because at the end of the day, basketball is a game of runs and there is going to be runs every single time you step on the court,” Kieger said. “If every single time you don’t weather the storm or you take a punch and you fold, obviously that is going to be pretty hard to come back from.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2020 at 5:09 PM.
