Penn State men’s basketball doomed by turnovers in Big Ten/ACC Challenge loss to Miami
The Penn State defense was swarming at times Wednesday night.
Myles Dread cut off several drives and stripped several ball handlers on their way to the rim. John Harrar created a wall near the hoop, making life difficult for any Miami player who wanted to attack off the dribble. The wing defenders closed out on shooters with the defense rotating behind them to be ready for the next potential pass.
All of that led to the Hurricanes scoring 63 points. And all of it led to a 63-58 loss.
The Penn State defense was near the top of its game Wednesday night, but its offense failed to do enough to sneak out the victory.
That end of the court saw plenty of struggles in the game, but the Nittany Lions still earned plenty of open looks. In fact, head coach Micah Shrewsberry said they got the type of shots they wanted in the game.
“If you look at our numbers and you look at our stats, and how we’re trying to play and what we’re doing offensively, we’re getting the shots we want,” Shrewsberry said. “We’re getting shots at the rim or we’re getting open 3-pointers.”
Sometimes those shots just don’t fall and there’s nothing a team can do schematically to fix the issue.
That was the case Wednesday night as the Lions shot 25% from 3-point range on 24 attempts from beyond the arc. There was one correctable area for them, according to Shrewsberry.
He didn’t think his players took good enough care of the ball in the game, leading to the defeat.
“We don’t value the basketball enough right now,” Shrewsberry said. “That’s something that we’re going to get cleaned up. ... For us to be a good team, we have to do that. We have to take care of the ball every single time, we have to value every single possession. And that takes a lot of effort. We’re spending a lot of our effort on defense to get stops. We’re basically getting the stop and just giving them the ball back.”
Harrar saw much of the same issues.
The senior center had three turnovers of his own in the game while leading the team with 16 points. Harrar believes those issues are correctable, and says his teammates have what it takes to get better.
“I think it’s just about the little things,” Harrar said. “The best basketball teams I’ve been a part of, they love doing the little things. That game, our turnovers just came from not doing the little things. ... We drill it every day. We’ve got to take care of the ball, value the ball. We’re shooting better percentages than teams but we’re taking less shots every game. It’s gonna be hard to win if we keep turning the ball over.”
Still, Shrewsberry’s players turned the ball over 14 times in the matchup, six more times than the Hurricanes did. No one player was to blame, either. Nobody had more than three turnovers, but all five starters either had two or three of them with seemingly nobody able to hang onto the ball.
That hints at a deeper underlying issue within the roster. The Nittany Lions lack the number of ball handlers who would be ideal to run Shrewsberry’s offense. Senior guard Sam Sessoms and Jalen Pickett are mostly tasked with controlling the ball for Penn State, but it’s difficult to ask two players to control the ball for nearly the entirety of the game.
Shrewsberry said he would love to have more players who can handle the ball, but believes the players he has are good enough to get the job and will continue improving.
“I think you always need more,” he said. “I think your best teams, ideally you want three guys that have been point guards at one point in time. They don’t have to be your full-time guys, but they need to be guys that can handle the ball and handle pressure. You always want more, I think everybody in America wants more, but this is what we got. We’re gonna keep playing and we’re gonna keep getting better and we’re gonna keep pushing the guys to be the best that they can be. And we’re gonna find the best way to play with them out there. ... Yes, I would love more ball handlers, but I think the guys we’ve got are good enough.”
The Penn State head coach may prove to be correct. His team may get better and may be in position to show Wednesday night will not be the norm this season.
But what’s more likely is that it will be a team that relies on shots falling to win games. And when they don’t — like Wednesday night — those wins may be hard to come by.
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
