How Jalen Pickett kept Penn State’s offense afloat in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament
Jalen Pickett fired a step-back 3-pointer from the left wing Wednesday night in Penn State’s 60-51 win over Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. He threw up his signature “w” with his hands and came back down the court talking, with his man nearby.
The senior guard wasn’t saying anything to the defender, but to himself.
“I made that shot and I was more talking to myself,” Pickett said. “Like, ‘good shot.’ Sometimes you gotta do that to get your own energy when you’re tired.”
Pickett’s talking worked.
He led the team with 22 points and helped carry the offense in the team’s opening round win over the Golden Gophers with his interior scoring and timely shooting beyond the arc.
He was able to get going using his post ups and taking advantage of a defense that didn’t seem to take his shooting seriously enough by going under screens and leaving him open.
Pickett used their decision as an opportunity to show he should be taken more seriously, but also to refocus himself.
“You’re just trying to go on to the next possession,” he said. “I made a couple mistakes defensively. ... Sometimes I get in my own head, so I gotta let it go sometimes. But sometimes I use it as motivation to just keep going and keep pushing through.”
The Nittany Lion guard quickly earned the trust of first-year head coach Micah Shrewsberry this season as a primary ball handler and was the coach’s clear go-to option Wednesday night. Shrewsberry said he worked to get the ball to Pickett where he was comfortable, in the post.
His guard has earned those shots based on how he’s played all season.
“He’s a good player,” Shrewsberry said with a smile. “... He’s played that way pretty much the entire season. He was slow out of the gates and he struggled a little bit early. But once he got comfortable, he’s played that way. He’s a good player. No matter what level you come from or where you went to originally, if you can play you can play. And he can play.”
Shrewsberry wanted to get the ball to his lead guard, but was aware of how often he made those decisions.
He went away from specific plays at times to keep the defense off-balance and allow him to take advantage in the second half.
“It might be something that you see early but you can’t go to it exclusively and give them time to adjust,” Shrewsberry said. “There’s some things you got to keep, you gotta hold. We ran a play at the start of the game and (sophomore guard) Dallion (Johnson) got a wide open shot. ... If I run it back to back, they’re gonna know how to guard it. They’re gonna think about it. They’re gonna figure out what to do. Same thing with Pickett and those post-ups or whatever it may be.”
Those shots, the second and third options Shrewsberry referred to, were especially apparent Wednesday night. Minnesota played only six players in the game and the sixth man, guard E.J. Stephens, only played 51 seconds thanks to a migraine headache he began to feel about an hour prior to tip-off, according to Minnesota head coach Ben Johnson.
Because of that, four Gophers played all 40 minutes while a fifth played 39 minutes and nine seconds. Those five players felt the weight of the playing time on their legs late in the game. Sophomore forward Jamison Battle said that didn’t mean he and his teammates were going to go down easy.
“I don’t really let the minutes factor in just because it’s do or die at this point and it’s the tournament,” Battle said. “So regardless of if you’re playing 40 minutes or you’re playing zero minutes, you’re gonna go out there and fight. I feel like we did that.”
While Minnesota only played six players, and really only five, Penn State played only seven prior to the score reaching double digits with about a minute of action left.
The workload is less impactful now for Minnesota since its season is over, but the Nittany Lions will have to return to the court Thursday night.
And they’ll have to do it against a team it played twice, and lost to twice, earlier this season. That was at the forefront of the Penn State staff’s mind following the win and Shrewsberry immediately tried to make sure his players will be as fresh as possible for an Ohio State team Thursday that had a bye in the first round of the conference tournament, in a game his team planned to play in.
“We trust our guys,” Shrewsberry said. “We have a great support staff. We got our guys out of here as quickly as possible to get back to the hotel, to eat, and then start the recovery process. We were expecting to come here and win and play tomorrow.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 12:31 AM.
